DIRENT(3)						   BSD Library Functions Manual 						 DIRENT(3)

NAME

     dirent -- directory format

SYNOPSIS

     #include <sys/types.h>
     #include <sys/dirent.h>

     mode
     DTTOIF(dirtype);

     dirtype
     IFTODT(mode);

DESCRIPTION

     Directories provide a convenient hierarchical method of grouping files while obscuring the underlying details of the storage medium.  A
     directory file is differentiated from a plain file by a flag in its inode(5) entry.  It consists of records (directory entries) each of which
     contains information about a file and a pointer to the file itself.  Directory entries may contain other directories as well as plain files;
     such nested directories are referred to as subdirectories.  A hierarchy of directories and files is formed in this manner and is called a
     file system (or referred to as a file system tree).

     Each directory file contains two special directory entries; one is a pointer to the directory itself called dot '.' and the other a pointer
     to its parent directory called dot-dot '..'.  Dot and dot-dot are valid pathnames, however, the system root directory '/', has no parent and
     dot-dot points to itself like dot.

     File system nodes are ordinary directory files on which has been grafted a file system object, such as a physical disk or a partitioned area
     of such a disk.  (See mount(8).)

IMPLEMENTATION NOTES

     The directory entry format is defined in the file <sys/dirent.h>, which is also included by <dirent.h>.  The format is represented by the
     dirent structure, which contains the following entries:

	   ino_t	   d_fileno;
	   uint16_t	   d_reclen;
	   uint16_t	   d_namlen;
	   uint8_t	   d_type;
	   char 	   d_name[MAXNAMLEN + 1];

     These are:

	   1.	The d_fileno entry is a number which is unique for each distinct file in the filesystem.  Files that are linked by hard links (see
		link(2)) have the same d_fileno.  If d_fileno is zero, the entry refers to a deleted file.  The type ino_t is defined in
		<sys/types.h>.

	   2.	The d_reclen entry is the length, in bytes, of the directory record.

	   3.	The d_namlen entry specifies the length of the file name excluding the NUL.  Thus the actual size of d_name may vary from 1 to
		MAXNAMLEN + 1.

	   4.	The d_type is the type of the file.

	   5.	The d_name entry contains a NUL-terminated file name.

     The following table lists the types available for d_type and the corresponding ones used in the struct stat (see stat(2)), respectively:

	   Dirent	  Stat		 Description
	   DT_UNKNOWN	  -		 unknown file type
	   DT_FIFO	  S_IFIFO	 named pipe
	   DT_CHR	  S_IFCHR	 character device
	   DT_DIR	  S_IFDIR	 directory
	   DT_BLK	  S_IFBLK	 block device
	   DT_REG	  S_IFREG	 regular file
	   DT_LNK	  S_IFLNK	 symbolic link
	   DT_SOCK	  S_IFSOCK	 UNIX domain socket
	   DT_WHT	  S_IFWHT	 dummy ``whiteout inode''

     The DT_WHT type is internal to the implementation and should not be seen in normal user applications.  The macros DTTOIF() and IFTODT() can
     be used to convert from struct dirent types to struct stat types, and vice versa.

COMPATIBILITY

     The IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (``POSIX.1'') standard specifies only the fields d_ino and d_name.  The remaining fields are available on many, but
     not all systems.

     Furthermore, the standard leaves the size of d_name as unspecified, mentioning only that the number of bytes preceding the terminating NUL
     shall not exceed NAME_MAX.  Because of this, and because the d_namlen field may not be present, a portable application should determine the
     size of d_name by using strlen(3) instead of applying the sizeof() operator.

SEE ALSO

     getdents(2), fs(5), inode(5)

HISTORY

     A dir structure appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.  The dirent structure appeared in NetBSD 1.3.

BSD
								   May 16, 2010 							       BSD