readdir() showing non visible files

Question

I am using readdir() in Ubuntu to display files and directories. The weird thing is readdir() displays some files starting with "dot", and some that end at ~ . But these files are not in my specified directory.

What are these files?

I was wondering when reading names of files, will these weird files will also be mentioned by d_name or not?

Regards

Answer 1

readdir reads all files present within the folder, while ls only list non-hidden files. Try to list your files with ls -a , and you will see those files.

Answer 2

By convention, files whose names start with a dot are hidden in Unix-like operating systems (see here ).

You can of course check for the dot at the beginning of the filenames produced by readdir, and simply not return/output those.