Normally you want to perform this check atomically with using the result, so stat() is useless. Instead, open() the file read-only first and use fstat(). If it's a directory, you can then use fdopendir()
to read it. Or you can try opening it for writing to begin with, and the open will fail if it's a directory. Some systems (POSIX 2008, Linux) also have an O_DIRECTORY extension to open which makes the call fail if the name is not a directory.
Your method with opendir() is also good if you want a directory, but you should not close it afterwards; you should go ahead and use it.
