Why does stat fail using a name from readdir? [duplicate]

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Classic readdir mistake: pDirent->d_name is the name of the directory entry, not a path to the file. It’s "1", "4-5.c", etc. So your stat calls are looking for a file with that name in the current directory, not under MyDirectory.

Check the return value of stat. You’ll see that it’s ENOENT — except for . and .., which exist in the current directory as well. When stat fails, the content of the stat structure is undefined.

If you’re calling opendir in a directory other than ., then to do pretty much anything useful with the returned names, you need to build a full path. Copy the path you passed to opendir to a buffer with enough room for a slash and file name in addition, and copy each file name to that buffer. Proof-of-concept code (error checking omitted, etc.):

char *directory = "MyDirectory";
size_t directory_length = strlen(directory);
char *path = malloc(directory_length + 1 + NAME_MAX);
strcpy(path, directory);
path[directory_length] = "https://stackoverflow.com/";
while ((pDirent = readdir(pDir)) != NULL) {
    strcpy(path + directory_length + 1, pDirent->d_name);
    if (stat(path, &vStat) == -1) {
        perror(path);
        continue;
    }
    …
}

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