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dir(4)
NAME
  dir - Format of directories

SYNOPSIS
  #include <sys/types.h>

  #include <dirent.h>

DESCRIPTION
  A directory behaves like an ordinary file except that no user may write
  into a directory. The fact that a file is a directory is indicated by a bit
  in the flag word of its inode entry. See the fs reference page.

  The POSIX standard way of returning directory entries is in directory entry
  structures, which are of variable length.  Each directory entry has a
  struct direct at the front of it, containing its inode number, the length
  of the entry, and the length of the name contained in the entry.  These are
  followed by the name padded to a 4-byte boundary with null bytes.  All
  names are guaranteed null terminated. The maximum length of a name in a
  directory is _D_NAME_MAX.

  By convention, the first two entries in each directory are for . (dot) and
  .. (dot-dot).	 The first is an entry for the directory itself.  The second
  is for the parent directory. The meaning of .. (dot-dot) is modified for
  the root directory (/) of the master file system, where .. (dot-dot) has
  the same meaning as . (dot).

SEE ALSO
  Functions: opendir(3)

  Files: fs(4)

Index for Section 4

Alphabetical listing for D

Top of page