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File and directory API introduction for the Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS).
Copyright 2007 by Apple Inc.
Copyright 1997-2005 by Easy Software Products, all rights reserved.
These coded instructions, statements, and computer programs are the
property of Apple Inc. and are protected by Federal copyright
law. Distribution and use rights are outlined in the file "LICENSE.txt"
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file is missing or damaged, see the license at "http://www.cups.org/".
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<h2 class='title'>Introduction</h2>
<p>The CUPS file and directory APIs provide portable interfaces
for manipulating files and listing files and directories. Unlike
stdio <tt>FILE</tt> streams, the <tt>cupsFile</tt> functions
allow you to open more than 256 files at any given time. They
also manage the platform-specific details of locking, large file
support, line endings (CR, LF, or CR LF), and reading and writing
files using Flate ("gzip") compression. Finally, you can also
connect, read from, and write to network connections using the
<tt>cupsFile</tt> functions.</p>
<p>The <tt>cupsDir</tt> functions manage the platform-specific
details of directory access/listing and provide a convenient way
to get both a list of files and the information (permissions,
size, timestamp, etc.) for each of those files.</p>
<p>The CUPS scheduler (<tt>cupsd</tt>), <tt>mailto</tt> notifier,
and many of the CUPS API functions use these functions for
everything except console (stdin, stdout, stderr) I/O.</p>
<h2 class='title'>General Usage</h2>
<p>The <var><cups/dir.h></var> and
<var><cups/file.h></var> header files must be included to
use the <tt>cupsDir</tt> and <tt>cupsFile</tt> functions,
respectively.</p>
<p>Programs using these functions must be linked to the CUPS
library: <var>libcups.a</var>, <var>libcups.so.2</var>,
<var>libcups.2.dylib</var>, <var>libcups_s.a</var>, or
<var>libcups2.lib</var> depending on the platform. The following
command compiles <var>myprogram.c</var> using GCC and the CUPS
library:</p>
<pre class='command'>
<kbd>gcc -o myprogram myprogram.c -lcups</kbd>
</pre>
<h2 class='title'>Compatibility</h2>
<p>All of these functions require CUPS 1.2 or higher.</p>