Hello all,
I am reading the content of the current library with readdir, but I would like to treat only files and not directories. How do I know that I am pointing to a directory and not to a file?
Thank you
views:
259answers:
1
+1
A:
You can use lstat, and the S_ISDIR macro.
E.g. without error-checking:
struct stat buffer;
int status;
char path[PATH_MAX];
DIR *dir = opendir(dir_name);
...
struct dirent *de = readdir(dir);
sprintf(path, "%s/%s", dir_name, de->d_name);
status = lstat(path, &buffer);
if(S_ISDIR(buffer.st_mode))
{
...
}
EDIT: Fixed to include directory in lstat path (per el.pescado). As noted by R Samuel Klatchko, you may want to take a whitelist approach (S_ISREG) instead of blacklisting types as they come up.
Matthew Flaschen
2010-04-16 22:16:52
You have to combine dirname and filename before passing path to lstat, eg. do sprintf(path, "%s/%s", dir_name, de->d_name);
el.pescado
2010-04-16 22:42:11
It would be a bit more robust to only process regular files entries (`S_ISREG`) rather then exclude directory entries (`S_ISDIR`). That way, if you run across another type of entry you won't accidentally process it.
R Samuel Klatchko
2010-04-16 22:44:16
And just noticed something else. You need to think about whether to use `stat` or `lstat`. If you have a symlink to a real file, do you want to process it or skip it? If you want to skip it, use `lstat` so you'll know it's a symlink. If you don't care about it being a symlink and want to process it assuming it's a symlink to a regular file, use `stat`.
R Samuel Klatchko
2010-04-17 06:11:52