dirent(4)                                                         dirent(4)


   NAME
         dirent - file system independent directory entry

   SYNOPSIS
         #include <dirent.h>

   DESCRIPTION
         Different file system types may have different directory entries.
         The dirent structure defines a file system independent directory
         entry, which contains information common to directory entries in
         different file system types.  A set of these structures is returned
         by the getdents(2) system call.

         The dirent structure is defined below.

               struct  dirent {
                       inot            dino;
                       offt            doff;
                       unsigned short   dreclen;
                       char             dname[1];
               };

         The dino is a number which is unique for each file in the file
         system.  The field doff is the offset of that directory entry in the
         actual file system directory.  The field dname is the beginning of
         the character array giving the name of the directory entry.  This
         name is null terminated and may have at most MAXNAMLEN characters.
         This results in file system independent directory entries being
         variable length entities.  The value of dreclen is the record length
         of this entry.  This length is defined to be the number of bytes
         between the current entry and the next one, so that the next
         structure will be suitably aligned.

   SEE ALSO
         getdents(2)


















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