NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | ATTRIBUTES | CONFORMING TO | NOTES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

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

NAME         top

       telldir - return current location in directory stream

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <dirent.h>
       long telldir(DIR *dirp);
   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):
       telldir():
        _XOPEN_SOURCE
           || /* Glibc since 2.19: */ _DEFAULT_SOURCE
           || /* Glibc versions <= 2.19: */ _BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE

DESCRIPTION         top

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

RETURN VALUE         top

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

ERRORS         top

       EBADF  Invalid directory stream descriptor dirp.

ATTRIBUTES         top

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

CONFORMING TO         top

       POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, 4.3BSD.

NOTES         top

       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 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         top

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

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of release 4.12 of the Linux man-pages project.  A
       description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the
       latest version of this page, can be found at
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
                                 2016-03-15                       TELLDIR(3)

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