Listing directory contents programmatically in Linux requires POSIX directory stream functions from <dirent.h>. Opening a directory handle with opendir() allows iterating through directory entries via readdir().

Directory Traversal C Code Example

list_dir.cc
#include <stdio.h>
#include <dirent.h>
#include <string.h>
 
int main(void) {
    DIR *dir = opendir(".");
    struct dirent *entry;
 
    if (dir == NULL) {
        perror("Unable to open current directory");
        return 1;
    }
 
    printf("Directory Contents:\n");
    while ((entry = readdir(dir)) != NULL) {
        // Skip current (.) and parent (..) directory entries
        if (strcmp(entry->d_name, ".") == 0 || strcmp(entry->d_name, "..") == 0) {
            continue;
        }
 
        // Display file name and inode number
        printf("  [%s] Inode: %ld\n", entry->d_name, (long)entry->d_ino);
    }
 
    closedir(dir);
    return 0;
}