Re: Any interest in a filename (parser) class?

From: mfdylan (dylan_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-02-15 00:16:58

--- In boost_at_y..., "davlet_panech" <davlet_panech_at_y...> wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Is there any interest in a filename parser library?
> 
There has been a discussion about it recently if you search back 
through the archives.
I started writing one more or less modelled on POSIX basename and 
dirname, with an additional 'suffix' call.
There's a couple of things it doesn't handle yet, like joining a 
directory name to a filename (ie, what delimiters to put in between) 
and making absolute and relative versions of pathnames.
Dealing with various platform differences is perhaps the main 
challenge: for a start I need to be able to construct and parse 
pathnames for multiple OS's regardless of the currently running OS 
(example: I send commands to unix machines from NT and need to 
manipulate pathnames in the command lines).
Things like case-sensitivity are almost impossible to deal with 
effectively, as under NT at least, you can have both case-insensitive 
and case-sensitive filenames.
This means code like

if (pname.suffix() == ".cpp")
 ...

which I support by having suffix return a new pathname object and 
overloading 'operator==' becomes awkward to write well.  For the time 
being I use a set of traits, with the default being platform 
specific, such that win32_traits::ignore_case() returns true.

Anyway, read the previous articles, there are quite a few awkward 
decisions you have to make in any design for this sort of thing.

Dylan