I was trying to get a list of filenames from a directory into an array, so I decided to look for a solucion on the Internet. I found the following method: fs.readdir:

fs.readdir(directoryPath, (err, files) => {
  if (err) {
    console.error('Error reading directory:', err);
    return;
  }
  console.log('Files in the directory:');
  files.forEach(file => {
    console.log(file);
  });
});

This worked, but when I tried to save the result into a varible, I was surprised to find that I couldn’t do it directly because it uses a callback. (That’s when I realized I needed to review my understanding of callbacks) the main issue was that this funcion is asynchronous, so I had to use other methods to retrive the list of files.

Thanks for the answer on StackOverFlow I discovered an awesome solution: there’s a method that gives the exact result I wanted.

fs.readdirSync(path)

With this I finally got what I needed.

After reviewing the Node.js documentation, I found several other interesting methods that have synchronous version (*Sync). I recommend going through the documentation for more details.

Another interesting fact: this method was inspired by the POSIX function readdir().