Re: recursing through directories

[Paul Eggert <eggert@twinsun.com>]

> From: Francesco Potorti` <pot@gnu.org>
> Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 16:48:32 +0200
> 
> Looking at the libc functions, I think that scandir is the most useful
> for this job.  Is it standard enough?

Not really, unfortunately.  ftw is standard, but it's a portability
hassle too.  In practice, there are real problems in running out of
file descriptors when descending into deeply nested directories.

You might try taking a look at lib/savedir.[ch] from the GNU core
utilities, written by David MacKenzie.
<ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/fetish/fileutils-4.1.8.tar.gz>
It's what I use in GNU tar.  Here's a precis:

  char *name_space = savedir (dir);
  if (! name_space)
    report_error (errno, dir);
  else
    {
      char *base;
      for (base = name_space; *base; base += strlen (base) + 1)
	operate_on (string_concat (dir, "/", base));
      free (name_space);
    }