Re: [boost] candidate for library, "sysutils"

From: David Abrahams (abrahams_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-03-26 21:34:39

Please boostify and submit!
Directory path manipulations are an important piece that is missing from the
C++ standard library. I suggest a quick look at Python's os.path
(http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-os.path.html) for
functionality you may have left out.

Regards,
Dave

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Coletti" <mcoletti_at_[hidden]>
To: "Boost C++ Library Mailing List" <boost_at_[hidden]>
Sent: Monday, March 26, 2001 2:29 PM
Subject: [boost] candidate for library, "sysutils"

> Hi!
>
> I'm a programmer that's been slinging C++ for several years.  I've
> developed the (possible) beginnings for a C++ system library.  I'll
> discuss the motivation for it and what I have so far so that you can
> decide whether it's worthy to include in the Boost library.
>
> Eric Raymond said that a number of software projects are engendered to
> scratch a programmer's "itch."  The itch for th e"C++ sysutils
> library" started because of the frustration with dirname(2) and
> basename(2).  These are C functions that provide the programmer the
> same functionality as their shell equivalents.  That is, the former
> will return the directory portion of a path string; the latter returns
> the last "name" in a similar path.  (E.g., dirname("/foo/bar") returns
> "/foo" and basename("/foo/bar") returns "bar".)  The problem is that
> these functions are inconsistently available from OS to OS; and, when
> available, there's typically more than one implementation.  For
> example, these functions can be found in BOTH <string.h> AND
> <libgen.h> on linux; worse yet, they have slightly differing semantics
> in that the latter will potentially modify the argument whereas the
> former doesn't.  FreeBSD doesn't have these functions at all.

<snip>