Dirent is a C/C++ programming interface that allows programmers to retrieve information about files and directories under Linux/UNIX. This project provides Linux compatible Dirent interface for Microsoft Windows.
By default, Dirent functions expect the directory names to be represented in the currently selected windows codepage. Moverover, Dirent functions return file names in the presently selected codepage. If you wish to use UTF-8 file names instead, then set the program's locale to ".utf8" or similar. For example, your C main program might look like-
#include <locale.h>
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
setlocale(LC_ALL, "LC_CTYPE=.utf8");
/*...*/
}
For more information on UTF-8 support, please see setlocale in Visual Studio C runtime library reference.
Download the latest Dirent installation package from
GitHub and
unpack the installation file with 7-zip, for example. The installation
package contains include/dirent.h file as well as a few example and test
programs.
To make dirent.h available for all C/C++ programs, simply copy the
include/dirent.h file to the system include directory. System include
directory contains header files such as assert.h and windows.h. In
Visual Studio 2008, for example, the system include may be found at
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\include.
Everything you need is included in the single dirent.h file, and you can
start using Dirent immediately -- there is no need to add files to your
Visual Studio project.
If you wish to distribute dirent.h alongside with your own source code,
then copy include/dirent.h file to a new sub-directory within your project
and add that directory to include path on Windows while omitting the directory
under Linux/UNIX. This allows your project to be compiled against native
dirent.h on Linux/UNIX while substituting the functionality on Microsoft
Windows.
The installation package contains six example programs:
| Program | Purpose |
|---|---|
| ls | List files in a directory, e.g. ls "c:\Program Files" |
| find | Find files in subdirectories, e.g. find "c:\Program Files\CMake" |
| updatedb | Build database of files in a drive, e.g. updatedb c:\ |
| locate | Locate a file from database, e.g. locate notepad |
| scandir | Demonstrate scandir() function |
| cat | Print a text file to screen |
Please install CMake to build example and test programs.
Then, open command prompt and create a temporary directory c:\temp\dirent
for the build files as
c:\
mkdir temp
mkdir temp\dirent
cd temp\dirent
Generate build files as
cmake d:\dirent
where d:\dirent is the root directory of the Dirent package (containing
this README.md file). If wish to omit example programs from the
build, then append the option -DDIRENT_BUILD_TESTS=OFF to the CMake
command line.
Once CMake is finished, open Visual Studio, load the generated dirent.sln
file from the build directory and build the whole solution. Once the build
completes, run the example programs ls, find, updatedb and locate from the
command prompt as
cd Debug
ls .
find .
updatedb c:\
locate cmd.exe
Visual Studio project also contains a solution named check which can be
used to verify that Dirent works as expected. Just build the solution from
Visual Studio to run the test programs.
We love to receive contributions from you. See the CONTRIBUTING file for details.
Dirent may be freely distributed under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for details.
I ported Dirent to Microsoft Windows in 1998 when only a few alternatives were available. However, the situation has changed since then and nowadays both Cygwin and MingW allow you to compile a great number of UNIX programs in Microsoft Windows. They both provide a full dirent API as well as many other UNIX APIs. MingW can even be used for commercial applications!