How can I get the list of files in a directory using C or C++?

Posted By: samoz

How can I determine the list of files in a directory from inside my C or C++ code?

I’m not allowed to execute the ls command and parse the results from within my program.

Solution

UPDATE 2017:

In C++17 there is now an official way to list files of your file system: std::filesystem. There is an excellent answer from Shreevardhan below with this source code:

#include <string>
#include <iostream>
#include <filesystem>
namespace fs = std::filesystem;

int main()
{
    std::string path = "/path/to/directory";
    for (const auto & entry : fs::directory_iterator(path))
        std::cout << entry.path() << std::endl;
}

Old Answer:

In small and simple tasks I do not use boost, I use dirent.h which is also available for windows:

DIR *dir;
struct dirent *ent;
if ((dir = opendir ("c:\src\")) != NULL) {
  /* print all the files and directories within directory */
  while ((ent = readdir (dir)) != NULL) {
    printf ("%sn", ent->d_name);
  }
  closedir (dir);
} else {
  /* could not open directory */
  perror ("");
  return EXIT_FAILURE;
}

It is just a small header file and does most of the simple stuff you need without using a big template-based approach like boost(no offence, I like boost!).

The author of the windows compatibility layer is Toni Ronkko. In Unix, it is a standard header.

Answered By: Peter Parker

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