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

Building on what herohuyongtao posted and a few other posts:

http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/general/39766/

What is the expected input type of FindFirstFile?

How to convert wstring into string?

This is a Windows solution.

Since I wanted to pass in std::string and return a vector of strings I had to make a couple conversions.

#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 

std::vector listFilesInDir(std::string path)
{
    std::vector names;
    //Convert string to wstring
    std::wstring search_path = std::wstring_convert>().from_bytes(path);
    WIN32_FIND_DATA fd;
    HANDLE hFind = FindFirstFile(search_path.c_str(), &fd);
    if (hFind != INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE) 
    {
        do 
        {
            // read all (real) files in current folder
            // , delete '!' read other 2 default folder . and ..
            if (!(fd.dwFileAttributes & FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY)) 
            {
                //convert from wide char to narrow char array
                char ch[260];
                char DefChar = ' ';
                WideCharToMultiByte(CP_ACP, 0, fd.cFileName, -1, ch, 260, &DefChar, NULL);
                names.push_back(ch);
            }
        } 
        while (::FindNextFile(hFind, &fd));
        ::FindClose(hFind);
    }
    return names;
}