Question

I am trying to make a simple program that handles files and directories, but I have two major problems:

• how can I check whether a file or directory exists or not, and
• how do I know if it is a file, directory, symbolic link, device, named pipe etc.? Mainly file and directories matter for now, but I’d like to know the others too.

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EDIT: Too all of those who are suggesting to use stat() or a similar function, I have already looked into that, and while it might answer my first question, I can’t figure out how it would answer the second…

Answer 1

Since you’re inquiring about named pipes/symlinks etc, you’re probably on *nix, so use the
lstat() function

struct stat info;

if(lstat(name,&info) != 0) {
  if(errno == ENOENT) {
   //  doesn't exist
   } else if(errno == EACCES) {
    // we don't have permission to know if 
   //  the path/file exists.. impossible to tell
   } else {
      //general error handling
   }
  return;
}
//so, it exists.

if(S_ISDIR(info.st_mode)) {
  //it's a directory
} else if(S_ISFIFO(info.st_mode)) {
  //it's a named pipe 
} else if(....) {
}

Se docs here for the S_ISXXX macros you can use.