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Implementing the ls -al command in C

Asked 2012-11-25T18:39:49.847
20

As a part of an assignment from one of my classes, I have to write a program in C to duplicate the results of the ls -al command. I have read up on the necessary materials but I am still not getting the right output. Here is my code so far, its only supposed to print out the file size and the file name, but the file sizes its printing are not correct.

Code:

#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <dirent.h>

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    DIR *mydir;
    struct dirent *myfile;
    struct stat mystat;

    mydir = opendir(argv[1]);
    while((myfile = readdir(mydir)) != NULL)
    {
        stat(myfile->d_name, &mystat);    
        printf("%d",mystat.st_size);
        printf(" %s\n", myfile->d_name);
    }
    closedir(mydir);
}

These are my results after executing the code:

[root@localhost ~]# ./a.out Downloads
4096 ..
4096 hw22.c
4096 ankur.txt
4096 .
4096 destination.txt

Here are the correct sizes:

[root@localhost ~]# ls -al Downloads
total 20
drwxr-xr-x.  2 root root 4096 Nov 26 01:35 .
dr-xr-x---. 24 root root 4096 Nov 26 01:29 ..
-rw-r--r--.  1 root root   27 Nov 21 06:32 ankur.txt
-rw-r--r--.  1 root root   38 Nov 21 06:50 destination.txt
-rw-r--r--.  1 root root 1139 Nov 25 23:38 hw22.c

Can anyone please point out my mistake.

Thanks,

Ankur

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1 Answer

1

The trouble is that when you stat("ankur.txt", &mystat), you are not working on the file "Downloads/ankur.txt". Most likely, the stat() is failing; alternatively, it is reporting on a different file.

Consequently, you need to look at whether your system supports fstatat() — new in POSIX 2008 — or arrange to prefix the name of the file with name of the directory.

answered 2012-11-25T18:49:10.547

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