[Solved] C – list all files in current directory then move in directory above, list files, and so on until root directory is reached [closed]

Question

Your cwd[1] != 0 or cwd[1] != '\0' is an okay way to do it. There’s no need to cast that to an int.

You could also use strcmp(cwd, "https://stackoverflow.com/"), which makes it slightly more clear what you are doing. This will be zero at the root directory on a UNIX or Linux system.

For a more portable solution, you can compare the current directory name with the previous directory name, something like this:

char cwd[1024];
char parent[1024];
getcwd(cwd, sizeof(cwd));

and inside the loop:

        chdir("..");
        getcwd(parent, sizeof(parent));
        if (strcmp(cwd, parent) == 0)
                break;
        strcpy(cwd, parent);

On a POSIX system, you can check if the current directory is the root without using getcwd(), using code like this:

int cwd_is_root(void)
{
        struct stat cwd, parent;
        if (stat(".", &cwd) < 0)
                return -1;
        if (stat("..", &parent) < 0)
                return -1;
        return cwd.st_ino == parent.st_ino && cwd.st_dev == parent.st_dev;
}

It is simpler and better just to use getcwd as you did, unless you are writing your own libc! getcwd is a system call on Linux.

Accepted Answer