telldir(3) — Linux manual page

telldir(3)              Library Functions Manual              telldir(3)

NAME

       telldir - return current location in directory stream

LIBRARY

       Standard C library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

       #include <dirent.h>

       long telldir(DIR *dirp);

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

       telldir():
           _XOPEN_SOURCE
              || /* glibc >= 2.19: */ _DEFAULT_SOURCE
              || /* glibc <= 2.19: */ _BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_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 to indicate the error.

ERRORS

       EBADF  Invalid directory stream descriptor dirp.

ATTRIBUTES

       For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see
       attributes(7).
       ┌─────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┬─────────┐
       │ Interface                           │ Attribute     │ Value   │
       ├─────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┼─────────┤
       │ telldir()                           │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe │
       └─────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┴─────────┘

STANDARDS

       POSIX.1-2008.

HISTORY

       POSIX.1-2001, 4.3BSD.

       Up to glibc 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 filesystems, the value returned by telldir() was a
       simple file offset within a directory.  Modern filesystems use
       tree or hash structures, rather than flat tables, to represent
       directories.  On such filesystems, 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

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Linux man-pages 6.9.1          2024-05-02                     telldir(3)

Pages that refer to this page: closedir(3), dirfd(3), opendir(3), readdir(3), rewinddir(3), scandir(3), seekdir(3)

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