dirent(4)                                                  dirent(4)


       NAME
             dirent - file system independent directory entry

       SYNOPSIS
             #include <sys/types.h>
             #include <sys/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 {
                           ino_t            d_ino;
                           off_t            d_off;
                           unsigned short   d_reclen;
                           char             d_name[1];
                   };

             The d_ino is a number which is unique for each file in the
             file system.  The field d_off is the offset of the subsequent
             directory entry in the actual file system directory.  The
             field d_name 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 d_reclen 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.

       REFERENCES
             getdents(2)











                           Copyright 1994 Novell, Inc.               Page 1