Hi.
How come when I use readdir() to read each file in a directory the d_type field is
always NULL? Isn't it supposed to be different for different file types?
Also is there a better way then using stat() to find out each file type (directory, regular file, etc.) from a C program?
Thanks
d_type is a char, so it can't be NULL. It can be DT_UNKNOWN, DT_REG, DT_DIR, and a few others. Still, apparently it always returns DT_UNKNOWN for you. What filesystem are you reading?
Oh, and if the d_type field consistently fails you, there is no way but to call stat().
All the buzzt!
CornedBee
"There is not now, nor has there ever been, nor will there ever be, any programming language in which it is the least bit difficult to write bad code."
- Flon's Law
On my system, I have this d_type under the compile time flag __USD_BSD, just check dirent.h in /usr/include.
To get the the file type I have been using stat().
To get the file system statfs() can be used.
Regards,
Amit Sahrawat
No. It's not supposed to be anything in particular at all. The following language comes from the Linux readdir(3) manpage (it applies elsewhere):Originally Posted by geekoftheweek
In other words, you can look at d_name and maybe d_ino. Trying to look at ANY OTHER FIELD of the dirent structure leads to unportable, possibly undefined behavior.According to POSIX, the dirent structure contains a field char d_name[]
of unspecified size, with at most NAME_MAX characters preceding the
terminating null character. Use of other fields will harm the porta-
bility of your programs. POSIX 1003.1-2001 also documents the field
ino_t d_ino as an XSI extension.
In UNIX there is no such thing as a "file type." A file is a file. Extensions don't matter, the exact "type" of file is not saved anywhere at all within the file system. To figure out what "type" of file you have, you have to open it, look at it, and figure it out yourself. The value of d_type is probably meaningless and certainly has nothing to do with the idea of "type" that you are looking for here. To determine if a file is regular or a directory, you have to call stat().
Last edited by brewbuck; 11-26-2007 at 11:57 AM.
By type, I think he means file, directory, symlink, device, named pipe, unix domain socket, etc. Those types do exist in Unix.
All the buzzt!
"There is not now, nor has there ever been, nor will there ever be, any programming language in which it is the least bit difficult to write bad code."
- Flon's Law
They do, but they will not be reliably returned in the d_type field of a dirent entry. You simply have to use stat().
