DIRENT(F)                                  UNIX System V



     Name
          dirent - filesystem-independent directory entry


     Syntax
          #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(S)
          system call.

          The dirent structure is defined below.

          struct    dirent {
                         long           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  that
          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 it will always result in the next  entry  being
          on a long boundary.


     Files
          /usr/include/sys/dirent.h


     See Also
          getdents(S)


     Standards Conformance
          dirent is conformant with:

          AT&T SVID Issue 2, Select Code 307-127;
          and The X/Open Portability Guide II of January 1987.


     (printed 8/23/89)                                  DIRENT(F)