NAME

       telldir - return current location in directory stream

SYNOPSIS

       #include <dirent.h>

       long telldir(DIR *dirp);

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

       telldir(): _BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE || _XOPEN_SOURCE

DESCRIPTION

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

RETURN VALUE

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

ERRORS

       EBADF  Invalid directory stream descriptor dirp.

ATTRIBUTES

   Multithreading (see pthreads(7))
       The telldir() function is thread-safe.

CONFORMING TO

       4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001.

NOTES

       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.

SEE ALSO

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

COLOPHON

       This  page  is  part  of  release 3.54 of the Linux man-pages project.  A description of the project, and
       information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

                                                   2013-09-02                                         TELLDIR(3)