This function is deprecated; use readdir(3) instead.
The readdir_r() function was invented as a reentrant version of readdir(3). It reads the next directory
entry from the directory stream dirp, and returns it in the caller-allocated buffer pointed to by entry.
For details of the dirent structure, see readdir(3).
A pointer to the returned buffer is placed in *result; if the end of the directory stream was
encountered, then NULL is instead returned in *result.
It is recommended that applications use readdir(3) instead of readdir_r(). Furthermore, since glibc
2.24, glibc deprecates readdir_r(). The reasons are as follows:
• On systems where NAME_MAX is undefined, calling readdir_r() may be unsafe because the interface does
not allow the caller to specify the length of the buffer used for the returned directory entry.
• On some systems, readdir_r() can't read directory entries with very long names. When the glibc
implementation encounters such a name, readdir_r() fails with the error ENAMETOOLONGafterthefinaldirectoryentryhasbeenread. On some other systems, readdir_r() may return a success status, but
the returned d_name field may not be null terminated or may be truncated.
• In the current POSIX.1 specification (POSIX.1-2008), readdir(3) is not required to be thread-safe.
However, in modern implementations (including the glibc implementation), concurrent calls to
readdir(3) that specify different directory streams are thread-safe. Therefore, the use of
readdir_r() is generally unnecessary in multithreaded programs. In cases where multiple threads must
read from the same directory stream, using readdir(3) with external synchronization is still
preferable to the use of readdir_r(), for the reasons given in the points above.
• It is expected that a future version of POSIX.1 will make readdir_r() obsolete, and require that
readdir(3) be thread-safe when concurrently employed on different directory streams.