What is FindFirstFile?

What is FindFirstFile?

The FindFirstFile function searches a directory for a file whose name matches the specified filename. FindFirstFile examines subdirectory names as well as filenames.

Is FindFirstFile recursive?

And here is an example using FindFirstFile and FindNextFile that can recursively find files having a given extension. You need to search recursively for each subdirectory.

Is FindFirstFile case sensitive?

Progress: I’ve discovered that Windows’ FindFirstFile and friends functions respects the case sensitivity of the directory even without using the FIND_FIRST_EX_CASE_SENSITIVE . It will not return a file with invalid casing.

What will the FindFirstFile () function returns that indicates success?

If the function succeeds, the return value is a search handle used in a subsequent call to FindNextFile or FindClose, and the lpFindFileData parameter contains information about the first file or directory found.

What is win32_find_data?

The file or directory is an archive file or directory. Applications use this attribute to mark files for backup or removal. For a file, this means that all of the data in the file is compressed. For a directory, this means that compression is the default for newly created files and subdirectories.

What do I need to know about ntquerydirectoryfile function?

The NtQueryDirectoryFile routine returns information about files that are contained in the directory represented by FileHandle. If provided, the value of the FileName parameter determines the entries that are included in the directory scan for all subsequent calls to NtQueryDirectoryFile for a given FileHandle.

What does the findfirstfileex function do?

The FindFirstFileEx function opens a search handle and returns information about the first file that the file system finds with a name that matches the specified pattern. This may or may not be the first file or directory that appears in a directory-listing application (such as the dir command) when given the same file name string pattern.

What’s the difference between cfilefind and findfirstfile?

CFileFind is nothing more than a convenience wrapper for FindFirstFile, but with some utility functions & overhead. The biggest downside to both methods is that they require a system call for every file. Internally, FindNextFile opens a file handle and then calls NtQueryDirectoryFile with said handle.

Is there MAX PATH limitation for findfirstfileexw?

Tip Starting in Windows 10, version 1607, for the unicode version of this function ( FindFirstFileExW ), you can opt-in to remove the MAX_PATH character limitation without prepending “\\\\?\\”. See the “Maximum Path Limitation” section of Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces for details. The information level of the returned data.