LinuxQuestions.org - searching for files

I come from a windows programming background, and I am trying to develop some linux apps (well stuff that works under darwin and linux). I am having trouble figuring out what is the linux equivlent to a windows api command is. If anyone has a link to a page which can provide these common translations, it would be greatly appricated.

However, right now, windows has an object, CFileFind, which allows you to pass in a path with wildcards along with attributes, such as a dirctory, system, hidden, etc... and will then return a list of all files that match that criteria. I need a similar function in linux. I have tried seaarching around, but I can't find anything function name that does that.