File Utilities

enum GFileError

typedef enum
{
  G_FILE_ERROR_EXIST,
  G_FILE_ERROR_ISDIR,
  G_FILE_ERROR_ACCES,
  G_FILE_ERROR_NAMETOOLONG,
  G_FILE_ERROR_NOENT,
  G_FILE_ERROR_NOTDIR,
  G_FILE_ERROR_NXIO,
  G_FILE_ERROR_NODEV,
  G_FILE_ERROR_ROFS,
  G_FILE_ERROR_TXTBSY,
  G_FILE_ERROR_FAULT,
  G_FILE_ERROR_LOOP,
  G_FILE_ERROR_NOSPC,
  G_FILE_ERROR_NOMEM,
  G_FILE_ERROR_MFILE,
  G_FILE_ERROR_NFILE,
  G_FILE_ERROR_BADF,
  G_FILE_ERROR_INVAL,
  G_FILE_ERROR_PIPE,
  G_FILE_ERROR_AGAIN,
  G_FILE_ERROR_INTR,
  G_FILE_ERROR_IO,
  G_FILE_ERROR_PERM,
  G_FILE_ERROR_FAILED
} GFileError;

Values corresponding to errno codes returned from file operations on UNIX. Unlike errno codes, GFileError values are available on all systems, even Windows. The exact meaning of each code depends on what sort of file operation you were performing; the UNIX documentation gives more details. The following error code descriptions come from the GNU C Library manual, and are under the copyright of that manual.

It's not very portable to make detailed assumptions about exactly which errors will be returned from a given operation. Some errors don't occur on some systems, etc., sometimes there are subtle differences in when a system will report a given error, etc.

G_FILE_ERROR

#define G_FILE_ERROR g_file_error_quark ()

Error domain for file operations. Errors in this domain will be from the GFileError enumeration. See GError for information on error domains.

enum GFileTest

typedef enum
{
  G_FILE_TEST_IS_REGULAR    = 1 << 0,
  G_FILE_TEST_IS_SYMLINK    = 1 << 1,
  G_FILE_TEST_IS_DIR        = 1 << 2,
  G_FILE_TEST_IS_EXECUTABLE = 1 << 3,
  G_FILE_TEST_EXISTS        = 1 << 4
} GFileTest;

A test to perform an a file using g_file_test().

g_file_error_from_errno ()

GFileError  g_file_error_from_errno         (gint err_no);

Gets a GFileError constant based on the passed-in errno. For example, if you pass in EEXIST this function returns G_FILE_ERROR_EXIST. Unlike errno values, you can portably assume that all GFileError values will exist.

Normally a GFileError value goes into a GError returned from a function that manipulates files. So you would use g_file_error_from_errno() when constructing a GError.

g_file_get_contents ()

gboolean    g_file_get_contents             (const gchar *filename,
                                             gchar **contents,
                                             gsize *length,
                                             GError **error);

Reads an entire file into allocated memory, with good error checking. If error is set, FALSE is returned, and contents is set to NULL. If TRUE is returned, error will not be set, and contents will be set to the file contents. The string stored in contents will be nul-terminated, so for text files you can pass NULL for the length argument. The error domain is G_FILE_ERROR. Possible error codes are those in the GFileError enumeration.

g_file_test ()

gboolean    g_file_test                     (const gchar *filename,
                                             GFileTest test);

Returns TRUE if any of the tests in the bitfield test are TRUE. For example, (G_FILE_TEST_EXISTS | G_FILE_TEST_IS_DIR) will return TRUE if the file exists; the check whether it's a directory doesn't matter since the existence test is TRUE. With the current set of available tests, there's no point passing in more than one test at a time.

Apart from G_FILE_TEST_IS_SYMLINK all tests follow symbolic links, so for a symbolic link to a regular file g_file_test() will return TRUE for both G_FILE_TEST_IS_SYMLINK and G_FILE_TEST_IS_REGULAR.

Note, that for a dangling symbolic link g_file_test() will return TRUE for G_FILE_TEST_IS_SYMLINK and FALSE for all other flags.

g_mkstemp ()

int         g_mkstemp                       (char *tmpl);

Opens a temporary file. See the mkstemp() documentation on most UNIX-like systems. This is a portability wrapper, which simply calls mkstemp() on systems that have it, and implements it in GLib otherwise.

The parameter is a string that should match the rules for mkstemp(), i.e. end in "XXXXXX". The X string will be modified to form the name of a file that didn't exist.

g_file_open_tmp ()

int         g_file_open_tmp                 (const char *tmpl,
                                             char **name_used,
                                             GError **error);

Opens a file for writing in the preferred directory for temporary files (as returned by g_get_tmp_dir()).

tmpl should be a string ending with six 'X' characters, as the parameter to g_mkstemp() (or mkstemp()). However, unlike these functions, the template should only be a basename, no directory components are allowed. If template is NULL, a default template is used.

Note that in contrast to g_mkstemp() (and mkstemp()) tmpl is not modified, and might thus be a read-only literal string.

The actual name used is returned in name_used if non-NULL. This string should be freed with g_free() when not needed any longer.

struct GDir

struct GDir;

An opaque structure representing an opened directory.

g_dir_open ()

GDir*       g_dir_open                      (const gchar *path,
                                             guint flags,
                                             GError **error);

Opens a directory for reading. The names of the files in the directory can then be retrieved using g_dir_read_name().

g_dir_read_name ()

G_CONST_RETURN gchar* g_dir_read_name       (GDir *dir);

Retrieves the name of the next entry in the directory. The '.' and '..' entries are omitted.

g_dir_rewind ()

void        g_dir_rewind                    (GDir *dir);

Resets the given directory. The next call to g_dir_read_name() will return the first entry again.

g_dir_close ()

void        g_dir_close                     (GDir *dir);

Closes the directory and deallocates all related resources.