Counting the number of files in a directory using C

Question

How can I count the number of files in a directory using C on linux platform.

Answer 1

If you do not care about current directory . and the parent directory.. like this ones:

drwxr-xr-x  3 michi michi      4096 Dec 21 15:54 .
drwx------ 30 michi michi     12288 Jan  3 10:23 ..

You can do something like this:

#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 

int main (void){
    size_t count = 0;
    struct dirent *res;
    struct stat sb;
    const char *path = "/home/michi/";

    if (stat(path, &sb) == 0 && S_ISDIR(sb.st_mode)){
        DIR *folder = opendir ( path );

        if (access ( path, F_OK ) != -1 ){
            if ( folder ){
                while ( ( res = readdir ( folder ) ) ){
                    if ( strcmp( res->d_name, "." ) && strcmp( res->d_name, ".." ) ){
                        printf("%zu) - %s\n", count + 1, res->d_name);
                        count++;
                    }
                }

                closedir ( folder );
            }else{
                perror ( "Could not open the directory" );
                exit( EXIT_FAILURE);
            }
        }

    }else{
        printf("The %s it cannot be opened or is not a directory\n", path);
        exit( EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    printf( "\n\tFound %zu Files\n", count );
}

Output:

1) - .gnome2
2) - .linuxmint
3) - .xsession-errors
4) - .nano
5) - .kde
6) - .xsession-errors.old
7) - .gnome2_private
8) - Public
9) - .gconf
10) - .bashrc
11) - .macromedia
12) - .thunderbird
13) - Pictures
14) - .profile
15) - .cinnamon
16) - .pki
17) - Compile
18) - Desktop
19) - .Private
20) - .cache
21) - .Xauthority
22) - .ICEauthority
23) - VirtualBox VMs
24) - .bash_history
25) - .mozilla
26) - .local
27) - .config
28) - .codeblocks
29) - Documents
30) - .bash_logout
31) - Videos
32) - Templates
33) - Downloads
34) - .adobe
35) - .gphoto
36) - Music
37) - .dbus
38) - .ecryptfs
39) - .sudo_as_admin_successful
40) - .gnome

    Found 40 Files