First of all I am not sure how you go about doing this in unix or linux! There is no standard, platform specific way to get all the files in a directory, however the following method works on windows making use of calls to winAPI so dont forget to include this!

#include <windows.h>

The following code then loops through a folder (in this case the starting folder of the executable) and puts the filenames into a string array.  The functions FindFirstFile and FindNextFile both work by populating a structure of the type WIN32_FIND_DATA which holds all the properties of the file in question.

UINT counter(0);
bool working(true);
string buffer;
string fileName[1000];
WIN32_FIND_DATA myimage;
HANDLE myHandle=FindFirstFile("*.jpg",&myimage);
if(myHandle!=INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE)
{
buffer=myimage.cFileName;
fileName[counter]=buffer;
while(working)
{
FindNextFile(myHandle,&myimage);
if(myimage.cFileName!=buffer)
{
buffer=myimage.cFileName;
++counter;
fileName[counter]=buffer;
}
else
{
//end of files reached
working=false;
}
}
}

When the last file in the folder has been read, the FindNextFile method will keep returning the same filename over and over again in the while loop. To catch this i use a sort of swap buffer to check if the same filename is found twice, and if so exiting the loop. I am sure there is a better way to catch the last file and will look into this soon. If anyone knows a more efficient way to do this please let me know.

NOTE:- “*.jpg” could be replaced with “C:/myfolder” or “*.doc” or a combination of the two depending on how you wish to filter the files that are found.  Using “” would list all the files in the running directory of the executable.