Haskell: getDirectoryContents: List all entries in the directory including special entries ., ..

System.Directory function provides getDirectoryContents function which return a list that contains all the entries in the directory (including ., ..). Following is the signature of getDirectoryContents function.

Prelude System.Directory> :t getDirectoryContents

getDirectoryContents :: FilePath -> IO [FilePath]

As per the documentation, you may get following error while working with getDirectoryContents function.

Error	Description
HardwareFault	A physical I/O error has occurred.
InvalidArgument	The operand is not a valid directory name.
isDoesNotExistError / NoSuchThing	The directory does not exist.
isPermissionError / PermissionDenied	The process has insufficient privileges to perform the operation.
ResourceExhausted	Insufficient resources are available to perform the operation.
InappropriateType	The path refers to an existing non-directory object.

DirectoryUtil.hs

import System.IO
import System.Directory

main = do
    putStrLn "Enter directory name"
    dir <- getLine

    fileNames <- getDirectoryContents dir
    print fileNames

$ runghc DirectoryUtil.hs 
Enter directory name
/Users
[".","..",".localized","harikrishna_gurram","Shared"]

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