| NAME | LIBRARY | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | ATTRIBUTES | STANDARDS | HISTORY | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON | |
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telldir(3)               Library Functions Manual              telldir(3)
       telldir - return current location in directory stream
       Standard C library (libc, -lc)
       #include <dirent.h>
       long telldir(DIR *dirp);
   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see
   feature_test_macros(7)):
       telldir():
           _XOPEN_SOURCE
              || /* glibc >= 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).
       ┌──────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┬─────────┐
       │ Interface                            │ Attribute     │ Value   │
       ├──────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┼─────────┤
       │ telldir()                            │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe │
       └──────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┴─────────┘
       POSIX.1-2008.
       POSIX.1-2001, 4.3BSD.
       Up to glibc 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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Linux man-pages 6.15            2025-05-17                     telldir(3)
Pages that refer to this page: closedir(3), dirfd(3), opendir(3), readdir(3), rewinddir(3), scandir(3), seekdir(3)