Closing a Directory

An open directory needs to be closed when the program is finished with it. The synopsis for closedir(3) is as follows:

#include <sys/types.h>
#include <dirent.h>

int closedir(DIR *dirp);

This function is simply called with a pointer to an open DIR structure. The value returned is -1 if the close operation fails, and the error is posted to errno. Otherwise, closedir(3) returns 0 upon success. An example is as follows:

DIR *dirp;             /* Ptr to open directory */

dirp = opendir("/etc");
if ( !dirp ) {
    /* report error */
}  else {
    /* Close the directory now */
    if ( closedir(dirp) == -1 ) {
        /* Report closedir(3) error */
    }
}

The example simply opens the directory /etc and then closes it again.