Question

Does any function return how many files are in a directory?

Is the only way to iterate through all files?

(For example, when you right click the directory in windows, it lists: 7 files in directory. Is there a way to extract that information?, how is “it” getting that info?)

Thanks.

Answer 1

I don’t know if there’s a better way, but I use FindFirstFile/FindNextFile to do this (some error checking removed for clarity):

WIN32_FIND_DATA ffd;
HANDLE hFind = INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE;
_TCHAR szDir[] = _T("somedir\\*");

hFind = FindFirstFile(szDir, &ffd);

do
{
    if((ffd.dwFileAttributes & FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY) && !(!_tcscmp(ffd.cFileName,_T(".")) || !_tcscmp(ffd.cFileName, _T(".."))))
    {
        // This is a directory
    }
}
while (FindNextFile(hFind, &ffd) != 0);