reading oldest file

[logic4fun]

All,
I have a C program with embedded SQL which reads the files and loads them into database. Today i am using a system call to ls -lrt and taking the output into an array to get my oldest file. I am trying to avoid using system call. Is there anyway to retrieve the oldest file from the directory and get it processed.

thanks for your time
logic4fun

 

[Salem]

Use opendir() / readddir() / closedir() to access all the files in a directory.
Use stat() to get the information on each file.

You pass a pointer to one of these

              struct stat {
                  dev_t         st_dev;      /* device */
                  ino_t         st_ino;      /* inode */
                  mode_t        st_mode;     /* protection */
                  nlink_t       st_nlink;    /* number of hard links */
                  uid_t         st_uid;      /* user ID of owner */
                  gid_t         st_gid;      /* group ID of owner */
                  dev_t         st_rdev;     /* device type (if inode device) */
                  off_t         st_size;     /* total size, in bytes */
                  blksize_t     st_blksize;  /* blocksize for filesystem I/O */
                  blkcnt_t      st_blocks;   /* number of blocks allocated */
                  time_t        st_atime;    /* time of last access */
                  time_t        st_mtime;    /* time of last modification */
                  time_t        st_ctime;    /* time of last change */
              };

and stat() fills it in with information about a file.
The st_mtime is the one you need to be looking at, find the one with the smallest (ie oldest) value.

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