How can I tell if a given path is a directory or a file? (C/C++)

stat() will tell you this.

struct stat s;
if( stat(path,&s) == 0 )
{
    if( s.st_mode & S_IFDIR )
    {
        //it's a directory
    }
    else if( s.st_mode & S_IFREG )
    {
        //it's a file
    }
    else
    {
        //something else
    }
}
else
{
    //error
}

Call GetFileAttributes, and check for the FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY attribute.

In Win32, I usually use PathIsDirectory and its sister functions. This works in Windows 98, which GetFileAttributes does not (according to the MSDN documentation.)

On Windows you can use GetFileAttributes on an open handle.

This is a simple method using the GetFileAttributesW function to check if the path is a directory on Windows. If the received path must be a directory or a file path then if it is not a directory path you can assume that it is a file path.

bool IsDirectory(std::wstring path)
{
    DWORD attrib = GetFileAttributes(path.c_str());

    if ((attrib & FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY) != 0)
        return true;

    return false;
}