ref: 75c92428225428c8fde2d015f010e608a0b12f1d
dir: purgatorio/man/2/sys-dirread
.TH SYS-DIRREAD 2 .SH NAME dirread \- read directory .SH SYNOPSIS .EX include "sys.m"; sys := load Sys Sys->PATH; dirread: fn(fd: ref FD): (int, array of Dir); .EE .SH DESCRIPTION .B Dirread reads the contents of the directory pointed to by the open file descriptor .IR fd , returning a tuple containing an array with one .B Dir structure for each directory entry read. These .B Dir structures are equivalent to the result of a .B stat call on each file in the directory. See .IR sys-stat (2) for a description of .B stat and .BR Dir . .PP A successful .B dirread returns a tuple giving the number of entries read and the resulting array. A return of (0,nil) indicates the end of the directory. Directory entries are variable length in general; the file offset is advanced by the number of bytes actually read. .PP Seeks (see .IR sys-seek (2)) are allowed on directories only to seek to the start. .PP In general, several calls to .B dirread will be needed to read the whole directory. .I Readdir (2) provides functions that return all the directory entries at once, optionally sorted. .SH SEE ALSO .IR readdir (2), .IR sys-intro (2), .IR sys-open (2), .IR sys-read (2), .IR sys-seek (2), .IR sys-stat (2) .SH DIAGNOSTICS The integer in .BR dirread 's return tuple has a value of -1 on error, and 0 on end of file. The array element of the tuple is nil in both cases.