dirent(4)                        UNIX System V                        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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