Opens a specified directory.
Format
#include <dirent.h>
DIR *opendir (const char *dir_name);
Arguments
- dir_name
- The name of the directory to be opened.
Description
This function opens the directory specifed by dir_
name and associates a directory stream with it. The directory
stream is positioned at the first entry. The type DIR, defined
in the <dirent.h> header file, represents a directory stream. A
directory stream is an ordered sequence of all the directory entries
in a particular directory.
The opendir function also returns a pointer to identify the
directory stream in subsequent operations. The NULL pointer is
returned when the directory named by dir_name cannot be
accessed, or when not enough memory is available to hold the entire
stream.
- Note
- An open directory must always
be closed with the closedir function to ensure that the next attempt
to open that directory is successful. The opendir function should be
used with readdir, closedir, and rewinddir to examine the contents
of the directory.
Example
See closedir for an example.
Return Values
| x | A pointer to an object of type
DIR. |
| NULL | Indicates an
error; errno is set to one of the following values:
- EACCES - Search permission is denied for any component
of dir_name or read permission is denied for dir_
name.
- ENAMETOOLONG - The length of the dir_name
string exceeds PATH_MAX, or a pathname component is longer than
NAME_MAX.
- ENOENT - The dir_name argument points to the name
of a file that does not exist, or is an empty string.
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