-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 You're right, it's more then I was looking for, but it looks like it will do just what I want. Thanks. Greg On Sat, May 15, 2004 at 06:59:58AM -0500, Thomas Stivers wrote: > On May 15 2004 1:35 AM, Gregory Nowak wrote: > > Hi all. > > > > I am writing a c program under gnu/Linux, in which I need to know if a > > file of a particular name exists. The only way I can think of checking > > for this is to attempt to open a file of a given name in read-only > > mode. If it opens, the file exists, if the FILE stream is NULL, the > > file doesn't exist. However, doing this for a good number of files > > would be inefficient in my opinion. So, I was wondering if there is a > > function which will simply tell me if a file of a given name exists or > > not, sort of like calling ls, although I don't actually want to be > > literally doing that either from within the program? Thanks. > > It does a lot more than you're asking for, but I think the stat system > call is what you're after. Check out man 2 stat for details. If I have > understood things corectly stat'ing a file is more efficient than opening > it. > > -- > "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. > Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, > by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan > > Thomas Stivers e-mail: stivers_t at tomass.dyndns.org > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > > > !DSPAM:40a60655252311627317009! > > - -- Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager at EU.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFApgjL7s9z/XlyUyARAufvAJ4jmTOM+yqjLGTWB/XavWDLqe9f7gCeNc4h nFEfxM7MzTDSS/meKrf/QTc= =Vcf4 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
