Traversing a directory tree in C++

Question

This is been a curiosity of mine for a while: how do you traverse a directory tree without using boost or any third-party library? Just plain ol' C++ (examples in 98, 99, 01, 0x and 1x specs are okay.)? It was done back in the day before boost existed so there's got to be a way to do it.

Answer 1

Please take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirent.h

The reference also has a link to dirent.h implementation for Windows or you can use cygwin

If you want to just do it for Windows you can build upon this example

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365200%28VS.85%29.aspx

Answer 2

There are no standard filesystem functions, so you won't get any answers that use "plain C++". For POSIX systems, opendir is used. For Windows, FindFirstFile. I'm not sure about other OSes.

There's a reason people recommend Boost Filesystem—it's portable and takes care of all these details for you.