Printing file permissions like 'ls -l' using stat(2) in C

Question

I am trying to write a small C program that emulates the unix command ls -l. To do so, I am using the stat(2) syscall and have ran into a small hi

Answer 1

I don't like the if/ else if syntax.

I prefer use the switch statement. After struggling a bit I found the way we can do it using different macros, for example:

S_ISCHR (mode)

Is equivalent to:

((mode & S_IFMT) == S_IFCHR)

This allows us to build a switch statement like this:

char f_type(mode_t mode)
{
    char c;

    switch (mode & S_IFMT)
    {
    case S_IFBLK:
        c = 'b';
        break;
    case S_IFCHR:
        c = 'c';
        break;
    case S_IFDIR:
        c = 'd';
        break;
    case S_IFIFO:
        c = 'p';
        break;
    case S_IFLNK:
        c = 'l';
        break;
    case S_IFREG:
        c = '-';
        break;
    case S_IFSOCK:
        c = 's';
        break;
    default:
        c = '?';
        break;
    }
    return (c);
}

Which in my opinion it's a bit more elegant than the if/else if approach.