Manpages - telldir.3

telldir - return current location in directory stream

  #include <dirent.h>

  long telldir(DIR *dirp);

Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see *feature_test_macros*(7)):

*telldir*():

      _XOPEN_SOURCE
         || /* Glibc since 2.19: */ _DEFAULT_SOURCE
         || /* Glibc <= 2.19: */ _BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE

The *telldir*() function returns the current location associated with the directory stream dirp.

On success, the *telldir*() function returns the current location in the directory stream. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set to indicate the error.

EBADF

Invalid directory stream descriptor dirp.

For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see *attributes*(7).

POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, 4.3BSD.

In glibc up to version 2.1.1, the return type of *telldir*() was off_t. POSIX.1-2001 specifies long, and this is the type used since glibc 2.1.2.

In early filesystems, the value returned by *telldir*() was a simple file offset within a directory. Modern filesystems use tree or hash structures, rather than flat tables, to represent directories. On such filesystems, the value returned by *telldir*() (and used internally by *readdir*(3)) is a “cookie” that is used by the implementation to derive a position within a directory. Application programs should treat this strictly as an opaque value, making no assumptions about its contents.

*closedir*(3), *opendir*(3), *readdir*(3), *rewinddir*(3), *scandir*(3), *seekdir*(3)

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