Difference between files and folders?

Can someone please tell me what is the difference between files and folder as far as when I am using findfirst and findnext?

If I'm trying to see if my the current folder contains a subfolder, do I just do something like this?

int i;
struct ffblk FileBlock
// Let's say path is something like D:\tmp
i = findfirst (Path, &FileBlock, FA_DIREC);

Is this only going to return 0 if there is a subfolder?

And if I do this instead?

i = findfirst (Path, &FileBlock, (FA_NORMAL | FA_RDONLY));

This should find only the normal files and read-only files?

Thank you.

Quote:

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Can someone please tell me what is the difference between files and folder as far as when I am using findfirst and findnext?

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First of all my version of VC++ does not have the dir.h header file. So, I really couldn't test this code snippet. The FA_DIREC means include directories and files. So, you'll have to check each ffblk found against the FA_DIREC atttribute to identify a directory.

Code:

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int main (void)
  {
    struct ffblk fb;
    int finished;
    finished = _findfirst ("*.*", &fb, FA_DIREC);
    while (!finished)
    {
      if (fb.ff_attrib & FA_DIREC)
        printf ("%s\n", fb.ff_name);
      finished = _findnext (&fb);
    }
    return 0;
}

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How about opening or closing a folder? Like you do fopen to open a file right? Is that apply to folders too? Or do i just specify the folder as part of a path then look for files in there?

Also, somewhat unrelated to the topic, but do I delete a file with remove()? When I read the doocumentation, it says that what remove does is unlink a file so that it's no longer accessible. So I'm not sure if that means something similar to remove a pointer to memory, in which case I'll get memory leaks? Or does it actually remove the file from the hard drive? Can I do remove on a folder too?

Thanks.

> do I delete a file with remove()?
Creating a simple test program will give you the answer. Remove does have less of a visible effect if you did not call fclose on the file stream first, though.

> Can I do remove on a folder too?
Probably not. For security reasons the OS probably won't let your program create or delete folders with some simple file I/O. Look into some API stuff, or something.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by fanoliv

How about opening or closing a folder? Like you do fopen to open a file right? Is that apply to folders too? Or do i just specify the folder as part of a path then look for files in there?

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You don't need to "open" a folder. Just specify it in the path.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by fanoliv

Can I do remove on a folder too?

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Learning how to use documentation would be a great first step for you. Try the *NIX manual pages for a start: http://www.hmug.org/man/3/remove.php

What you find there is the following excerpt:

Quote:

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SYNOPSIS
#include <stdio.h>

int remove(const char *path);



DESCRIPTION
The remove() function removes the file or directory specified by path.

If path specifies a directory, remove(path) is the equivalent of
rmdir(path). Otherwise, it is the equivalent of unlink(path).

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So we simply look up the rmdir() function the same way. You find the following excerpt there:

Quote:

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SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>

int rmdir(const char *path);



DESCRIPTION
Rmdir() removes a directory file whose name is given by path. The direc-
tory must not have any entries other than `.' and `..'.

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And there you have your answer with 30 seconds of research. remove() can remove a directory as long as the directory is empty.