Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!oliveb!ames!scubed!warner
From: warner@scubed.UUCP (Ken Warner)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: scandir()
Keywords: scandir catch-22
Message-ID: <801@scubed.UUCP>
Date: 1 Jul 88 14:57:12 GMT
References: <1445@uokmax.UUCP> <799@scubed.UUCP> <12267@mimsy.UUCP>
Reply-To: warner@scubed.UUCP (Ken Warner)
Organization: /etc/organization
Lines: 36

In article <12267@mimsy.UUCP> chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes:
>In article <799@scubed.UUCP> warner@scubed.UUCP (Ken Warner) writes:
>>specific.  The trick to using scandir() is to know how many entries are
>>in the directory before you make the call to scandir(). 
>This is wrong (as was the code that called scandir).  If you had to
>know the directory length first, scandir would be useless.  The manual
>entry for scandir is correct but misleading (there is no array in
>its declaration!).
[stuff deleted]
>	struct direct **list;
>	int i, n;
>	/* important:      & */
>	n = scandir("foo", &list, (int (*)())NULL, (int (*)())NULL);
>	/* important:      & */
> * The type of the second argument to scandir is `pointer to pointer
> * to pointer to struct direct', or `struct direct ***'.  As a parameter
> * this may (but never should) be written as `struct direct *(*namelist[])'.
> * The manual is misleading; namelist is neither an array nor a pointer to
        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
You got that right. Sorry for my assertion that you needed to know how many
entries were in the directory etc.  I took the man page literally.  

SYNTAX
     #include <sys/types.h>
     #include <sys/dir.h>

     scandir(dirname, namelist, select, compar)
     char *dirname;
     struct direct *(*namelist[]);
     int (*select)();
     int (*compar)();

The only way I could make this declaration work was to declare a static array.
And now I don't know why it worked at all.  Must have been tired or stupid. 
My apologies to all.
Ken Warner