Traversing Directories in C

Author: Jack Robbins

This project contains one C program, count_lines.c, that takes in a path to a directory as input, and then opens that directory, if possible, and recursively, in a depth-first search manner, goes through every sub-directory of that directory. Simply to show functionality and demonstrate the potential usefulness of this kind of directory traversal, this program also counts the number of lines in any and all text(.txt extension) files under said directory and any of its subdirectories.

Running this program

For convenience, a runner script run.sh has been provided that compiles the program, takes in user input, and runs the program all at once. An example of how to use it is below.

Note

After downloading run.sh, be sure to grant executable permissions by running chmod +x run.sh

Example: Counting all of the lines in all .txt files under your Documents folder on a Linux system

example@bash:~$ ./run.sh count_lines.c
If your program requires input, enter it here: /home/<your_username>/Documents

So long as the pathname provided to the program is a valid path to a directory, the program will attempt to traverse said directory.

Warning

Since this script provides a recursive depth-first traversal solution, attempting to run the script on the root directory: / or any other large directories that have subdirectories that each have numerous subdirectories(etc. etc.) will cause a stack overflow, leading to a segmentation fault error. This program is not intended for searching through an entire file system.