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

Question

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

Answer 1

This implementation realizes your purpose, dynamically filling an array of strings with the content of the specified directory.

int exploreDirectory(const char *dirpath, char ***list, int *numItems) {
    struct dirent **direntList;
    int i;
    errno = 0;

    if ((*numItems = scandir(dirpath, &direntList, NULL, alphasort)) == -1)
        return errno;

    if (!((*list) = malloc(sizeof(char *) * (*numItems)))) {
        fprintf(stderr, "Error in list allocation for file list: dirpath=%s.\n", dirpath);
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    for (i = 0; i < *numItems; i++) {
        (*list)[i] = stringDuplication(direntList[i]->d_name);
    }

    for (i = 0; i < *numItems; i++) {
        free(direntList[i]);
    }

    free(direntList);

    return 0;
}