Question

I’m trying to figure out how to work this thing out .. For some reason, it ends at a certain point.. I’m not very good at recursion and I’m sure the problem lies somewhere there..

Also, even if I checked for cFileName != “..”, it still shows up at the end, not sure why but the “.” doesn’t show up anymore..

void find_files( wstring wrkdir )
{
    wstring temp;

    temp = wrkdir + L"\\" + L"*"; 
    fHandle = FindFirstFile( temp.c_str(), &file_data );

    if( fHandle == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE )
    {
         return;
    }
    else 
    { 
        while( FindNextFile( fHandle, &file_data ) ) 
        {
            if( file_data.dwFileAttributes == FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY &&
                wcscmp(file_data.cFileName, L".") != 0 && 
                        wcscmp(file_data.cFileName, L"..") != 0 )
            {
                find_files( wrkdir + L"\\" + file_data.cFileName  );
            }
            else if( file_data.dwFileAttributes != FILE_ATTRIBUTE_HIDDEN && 
                 file_data.dwFileAttributes != FILE_ATTRIBUTE_SYSTEM  )
            {
                results << wrkdir << "\\" << file_data.cFileName << endl;
            }
        }
    }
}

After changing those, the program doesn’t enumerate the remaining files left..

For example, if there is a sub folder named test, it enumerates everything inside test but doesn’t finish enumerating the files inside the original directory specified.

Answer 1

From the FindFirstFile documentation:

If the function fails or fails to
locate files from the search string in
the lpFileName parameter, the return
value is INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE and the
contents of lpFindFileData are
indeterminate.

You should only exit from the one iteration not the whole program:

   if( fHandle == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE )
   {
     return;
   }

And this may solve your other problem:

else if( file_data.dwFileAttributes != FILE_ATTRIBUTE_HIDDEN && 
   file_data.dwFileAttributes != FILE_ATTRIBUTE_SYSTEM  &&
   wcscmp(file_data.cFileName, L".") != 0 && 
   wcscmp(file_data.cFileName, L"..") != 0
 )
{
    results << wrkdir << "\\" << file_data.cFileName << endl;
}

Also see @fretje’s answer as well. It gives another problem that your code has.

Updated new: You need to use fHandle as a local variable as well, not global variable.

Change to:

 HANDLE fHandle = FindFirstFile( temp.c_str(), &file_data );