telldir (3)

#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

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 appropriately.

EBADF

Invalid directory stream descriptor dirp.

Multithreading (see pthreads(7))

The telldir() function is thread-safe.

4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001.

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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