Re: [boost] Re: the first version of abstract path manipulation class (interface)

From: Matt Austern (austern_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-01-31 12:21:01

Jason Stewart wrote:

> 
> This is making my head hurt.
> 
> I think you're right, the right way is the way the OS does it. I'm not sure 
> of the best way to handle that. However, it seems important to have at 
> least basic comparison functionality. I often find myself wanting to put 
> Filenames in a std::map so would be nice to have at least have a 
> specialized less, similar to shared_ptr.

But what does comparison mean?  The strings "b/c" and "b/./c" and
"b/../b/c" and "../a/b/c" are all different, but on Unix the
first three are the same path and the last might be as well.  (And
I'm not even getting to links.)

I suppose my feeling is: if all you mean by comparison is string
comparison, then there's no need to provide a special feature.  Just
write the paths out in human readable form and compare them.
Sometimes it'll work, sometimes it won't.  If you mean something
other than string comparison then it's a hard problem, and you need
to define exactly what you want.

                        --Matt