How to check whether a file exists or not at its speciefied location
.Is there any system call for this

TIA
Niraj

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

On 28 Jun 2005 22:46:23 -0700, niraj.kumar.ait@gmail.com
<niraj.kumar.ait@gmail.com> wrote:
> How to check whether a file exists or not at its speciefied location
> .Is there any system call for this
>
stat


--
Tonight you will pay the wages of sin; Don't forget to leave a tip.

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

niraj.kumar.ait@gmail.com wrote:
# How to check whether a file exists or not at its speciefied location
# .Is there any system call for this

Within a C program you can use access or stat
man 2 access
man 2 stat


In a shell script, you can use variants of test (or [...])

$ touch Q
$ if [ -e Q ]; then echo est; else echo non; fi
est
$ if [ -e QX ]; then echo est; else echo non; fi
non

man 1 test
--
SM Ryan http://www.rawbw.com/~wyrmwif/
Mention something out of a Charleton Heston movie, and suddenly
everybody's a theology scholar.

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

niraj.kumar.ait@gmail.com wrote:
> How to check whether a file exists or not at its speciefied location
> .Is there any system call for this

There's stat(2), as other's have mentioned. Also access(2). You can also
just try to open the file using fopen(3) or open(2). In fact, if your
intention is to open the file if it exists than simply open it, otherwise
you have a race condition and/or are doing duplicate work.

- Bill

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

On Tue, 28 Jun 2005 niraj.kumar.ait@gmail.com wrote:

> How to check whether a file exists or not at its speciefied location
> .Is there any system call for this

You can use access(), stat(), or open() to check for a file's existance,
but if you plan to check for a file existance before opening, beware that
this introduces a race condition to your program.  In this instance, it's
better to just open() the file and deal with any errors.

HTH,

--
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]