How do I use Glib (or Any other Library) to list all the files in a directory?

Question

I cannot figure out how to use GLib (GIO?) to list all the files (file-names?) in a given directory. There is no good doc or tutorial. Any code snippets are welcome. If it is not possible (or too troublesome) to do this using GLib, Is there any good C or C++ third party library to do this. EXCEPT Boost.FileSystem as I have a lot of trouble compiling boost.filesystem on minGw. There is of course "dirent.h" as a last resort , but it isn't standard and although it is supported on gnu gcc (mingw) , it is not included in the MSVC toolchain. So is it recommended to use dirent.h? Any good solution welcome.

Note: I don't know whether this should be tagged as c or c++. I am using c++ but glib is a c library.

`GLib` and `glibc` are two completely different libraries. Which one are you talking about? — Mat, Oct 09 '11 at 14:25
GLIb is the name the GTK people chose for their library of utility functions and should not be confused with the GNU glibc library. There is some documentation at http://developer.gnome.org/glib/2.29/glib-File-Utilities.html. As e.dan points out, there are C(++) functions. The advantage to GLib is that GLIb generally does its own memory allocations where C(++) doesn't. — user732933, Oct 09 '11 at 15:07

score 10 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 09 '11 at 14:35

10

If you are looking for a glib example, here you go.

GDir *dir;
GError *error;
const gchar *filename;

dir = g_dir_open(".", 0, &error);
while ((filename = g_dir_read_name(dir)))
    printf("%s\n", filename);

answered Oct 09 '11 at 14:35

cnicutar

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Thanks. Your reply was quick , to the point and helpful. (+1) – ApprenticeHacker Oct 09 '11 at 14:49

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:12

1

On POSIX systems, yes, I believe opendir/readdir/closedir and the associated dirent structure are what you need. On Win32, not so sure, but maybe this helps?

edited May 23 '17 at 12:12

Community

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answered Oct 09 '11 at 14:32

e.dan

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 12 '20 at 21:30

Nowadays you use Gio for this. Here is an example from GNOME Shell, using the Javascript binding, gjs. Something like:

    const directory = GLib.build_filenamev([ 'some', 'path']);

    try {
        fileEnum = directory.enumerate_children('standard::name,standard::type',
                                                Gio.FileQueryInfoFlags.NONE, null);
    } catch (e) {
        fileEnum = null;
    }
    if (fileEnum != null) {
        let info;
        while ((info = fileEnum.next_file(null))) {
            // Do something with info
            // or with fileEnum.get_child(info)
        }
    }

How do I use Glib (or Any other Library) to list all the files in a directory?

3 Answers3