<dirent.h>(P)						     POSIX Programmer's Manual						     <dirent.h>(P)

NAME

       dirent.h - format of directory entries

SYNOPSIS

       #include <dirent.h>

DESCRIPTION

       The internal format of directories is unspecified.

       The <dirent.h> header shall define the following type:

       DIR    A type representing a directory stream.

       It shall also define the structure dirent which shall include the following members:

	      ino_t  d_ino	 File serial number.

	      char   d_name[]	 Name of entry.

       The type ino_t shall be defined as described in <sys/types.h> .

       The character array d_name is of unspecified size, but the number of bytes preceding the terminating null byte shall not exceed {NAME_MAX}.

       The following shall be declared as functions and may also be defined as macros. Function prototypes shall be provided.

	      int	     closedir(DIR *);
	      DIR	    *opendir(const char *);
	      struct dirent *readdir(DIR *);

	      int	     readdir_r(DIR *restrict, struct dirent *restrict,
				 struct dirent **restrict);

	      void	     rewinddir(DIR *);

	      void	     seekdir(DIR *, long);
	      long	     telldir(DIR *);

       The following sections are informative.

APPLICATION USAGE

       None.

RATIONALE

       Information  similar  to  that  in the <dirent.h> header is contained in a file <sys/dir.h> in 4.2 BSD and 4.3 BSD. The equivalent in these
       implementations of struct dirent from this volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 is struct direct. The	filename  was  changed	because  the  name
       <sys/dir.h>  was  also  used in earlier implementations to refer to definitions related to the older access method; this produced name con-
       flicts. The name of the structure was changed because this volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 does not completely define what is in the  struc-
       ture, so it could be different on some implementations from struct direct.

       The name of an array of char of an unspecified size should not be used as an lvalue. Use of:

	      sizeof(d_name)

       is incorrect; use:

	      strlen(d_name)

       instead.

       The array of char d_name is not a fixed size. Implementations may need to declare struct dirent with an array size for d_name of 1, but the
       actual number of characters provided matches (or only slightly exceeds) the length of the filename.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

       None.

SEE ALSO

       <sys/types.h> , the  System  Interfaces	volume	of  IEEE Std 1003.1-2001,  closedir(),	opendir(),  readdir(),	readdir_r(),  rewinddir(),
       seekdir(), telldir()

COPYRIGHT

       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2003 Edition, Standard for Information Technol-
       ogy -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 6, Copyright (C) 2001-2003 by the Institute of
       Electrical  and	Electronics  Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. In the event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE
       and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original Standard can  be  obtained
       online at http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .

IEEE
/The Open Group						       2003							     <dirent.h>(P)