On systems that do not provide a Virtual File System (VFS), the standard file I/O functions such as open() and read() may be unavailable or tightly coupled to the underlying storage system.

To make TARFS portable to such environments, TARFS provides a Native API that mirrors the familiar POSIX-like file and directory operations:

open()     → tarf_open()
close()    → tarf_close()
opendir()  → tard_opendir()
readdir()  → tard_readdir()
mmap()     → tarf_mmap()
ioctl()    → tarf_ioctl()

and so on.

The main difference in the function signatures is that every Native API function takes one additional parameter: the file system identifier as its first argument.

This identifier is the value returned by tarfs_mount().

For example:

int fd = tarf_open(fs_id, "/index.html", O_RDONLY);

tarf_open

int tarf_open(void *ctx, const char *path0, int flags, int mode)

Open a TARFS file or directory.

Definition file.c:252

If only a single TARFS instance is mounted, 0 (zero) can be used instead of the file system identifier:

int fd = tarf_open(0, "/index.html", O_RDONLY);

This allows TARFS to be used directly on bare-metal systems or on embedded platforms without requiring a Virtual File System layer.