In C, checking for existence of file with name matching a pattern

Question

I\'ve seen a few methods for checking the existence of a file in C. However, everything I\'ve seen works for a specific file name. I would like to check for any file that

Answer 1

You can use glob(3) (standardized by POSIX). You give it a wildcard pattern and it will search the filesystem for matches.

Example:

#include 
#include 

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
   glob_t globbuf;
   if (0==glob(argv[1], 0, NULL, &globbuf)){
       char **a=globbuf.gl_pathv;

       puts("MATCHES");
       for(;*a;a++)
           puts(*a);
   }
   globfree(&globbuf);
}

Running:

./a.out 'lockfile*'

should give you your lockfiles.