centos man page for telldir

TELLDIR(3)						     Linux Programmer's Manual							TELLDIR(3)

NAME
       telldir - return current location in directory stream

SYNOPSIS
       #include <dirent.h>

       long telldir(DIR *dirp);

   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

       telldir(): _BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE || _XOPEN_SOURCE

DESCRIPTION
       The telldir() function returns the current location associated with the directory stream dirp.

RETURN VALUE
       On success, the telldir() function returns the current location in the directory stream.  On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set appro-
       priately.

ERRORS
       EBADF  Invalid directory stream descriptor dirp.

CONFORMING TO
       4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001.

NOTES
       In glibc up to version 2.1.1, the return type of telldir() was off_t.  POSIX.1-2001 specifies long, and this is the type used  since  glibc
       2.1.2.

       In  early  file systems, the value returned by telldir() was a simple file offset within a directory.  Modern file systems use tree or hash
       structures, rather than flat tables, to represent directories.  On such file systems, the value returned by telldir() (and used	internally
       by readdir(3)) is a "cookie" that is used by the implementation to derive a position within a directory.  Application programs should treat
       this strictly as an opaque value, making no assumptions about its contents.

SEE ALSO
       closedir(3), opendir(3), readdir(3), rewinddir(3), scandir(3), seekdir(3)

COLOPHON
       This page is part of release 3.53 of the Linux man-pages project.  A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs,  can
       be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

								    2013-03-24								TELLDIR(3)