telldir(3) Library Functions Manual telldir(3)
telldir - return current location in directory stream
Standard C library (libc, -lc)
#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
The telldir() function returns the current location associated
with the directory stream dirp.
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.
EBADF Invalid directory stream descriptor dirp.
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see
attributes(7).
┌─────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┬─────────┐
│ Interface │ Attribute │ Value │
├─────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┼─────────┤
│ telldir() │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe │
└─────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┴─────────┘
POSIX.1-2008.
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.
closedir(3), opendir(3), readdir(3), rewinddir(3), scandir(3),
seekdir(3)
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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)