[Chapter 12] 12.4 Opening and Closing a Directory Handle
Author: Randal Schwartz, Tom Christiansen & Larry Wall
Date: 1999-07-02T01:34:39Z

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| Chapter 12 Directory Access |

## 12.4 Opening and Closing a Directory Handle

The `opendir` function works like the C and C++ library call of the same name. You give it the name of a new directory handle and a string value denoting the name of the directory to be opened. The return value from `opendir` is true if the directory can be opened, false otherwise. Here's an example:

    opendir(ETC,"/etc") || die "Cannot opendir /etc: $!";

Normally, at this point, we'd go playing with the directory handle `ETC`, but it's probably nice to know how to close the directory handle first. This is done with `closedir`, in a similar manner to using `close`, like so:

    closedir(ETC);

Like `close`, `closedir` is often unnecessary, since all directory handles are automatically closed before they're reopened or at the end of the program.

12.3 Directory Handles |  | 12.5 Reading a Directory Handle