Thread: File/Directory manipulation

I would like to be able to do file/directory manipulation in C.

Simple and cross-platform would be great, otherwise it should work in Linux.

I tried searching the wep and looking at some man pages, but couldn't find anything useful.

Cross-platform isn't really necessary, I just thought maybe something existed.

I'll check out opendir().

This works, it lists all the files in the current dir:

PHP Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <dirent.h>

int main()
{
    DIR *dir = opendir(".");
    struct dirent *dirent;
    
    if (dir)
    {
        while (dirent = readdir(dir))
        {
            printf("%s\n", dirent->d_name);
        }
    }
    else
    {
        fprintf(stderr, "error: cannot access directory\n");
    }
    
    return 0;
} 


Now I have a few questions:

How do I get a file pointer from a dirent?

How do I tell what type of file the dirent is, and if it's a directory, recursively go in it?

> How do I get a file pointer from a dirent?
d_name is the file.
If you want to do something with the file, you'll have to open it.

> How do I tell what type of file the dirent is, and if it's a directory, recursively go in it?
Use the stat() function (see the manual page)
It has things like IS_DIR() and other macros to tell you what it is.

I wrote this:

PHP Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <dirent.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>

int main()
{
    DIR *dir = opendir(".");
    struct dirent *dp;
    struct stat stat;
    
    if (dir)
    {
        printf("\n--- %s ---\n", dp->d_name);
        if (stat(dp->d_name, &stat) == 0)
        {
            //TODO: display stats
        }
        else
        {
            fprintf(stderr, "error: stat failed\n");
        }
    }
    else
    {
        fprintf(stderr, "error: cannot access directory\n");
    }
    
    return 0;
} 


but it gives an error:

Code:

$ gcc test.c 
test.c: In function ‘main’:
test.c:14:11: error: called object ‘stat’ is not a function

Because you have a variable with the same name as the function.

Haven't noticed that.