Re: [boost] Re: Design for a file system library

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-02-23 14:08:34

At 11:50 AM 2/23/2002, jan_langer wrote:

 >--- In boost_at_y..., Dan Nuffer <dnuffer_at_c...> wrote:
 >> Beman Dawes wrote:
 >>
 >> >I've written a design document for a file system library. See
 >>
 >>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/boost/files/filesys
 >tem/filesystem_library_design.htm
 >>
 >> Looks like a great start.
 >ACK
 >
 >> One thing that isn't clear: Does a filepath
 >> contain text suitable to pass to a fstream constructor?  If not,
 >then
 >> one operation I think should be added:
 >> - Given a filepath, return a char const * suitable for a fstream
 >constructor
 >
 >if i understood the document correctly filepath is only a normal
 >string and you can pass filepath.c_str () to the fstream.

Yes.

 >other filesystem related things:
 >
 >davlet_panech mentioned a class syscall_error. i think this is quite
 >useful since
 >"Unless otherwise specified, operations throw exceptions if they do
 >not complete successfully."
 >and there is already such a class in the dir_it package.

Yes.  I'm using the syscall_error (renamed filesystem_error) class from 
dir_it in my experiments.  I moved it to its own header.  (I've also 
renamed dir_it -> directory_iterator.)

 >in the document it says "A standard set of attributes is encouraged."
 >i tried to address this in
 >http://groups.yahoo.com/group/boost/files/filesystem/Attributes.html
 >but noone was interested in discussing it :-(

I'm very interested in it, but didn't feel I could discuss it (or dir_it or 
several pathname postings) without first understanding the overall design 
requirements and goals.  If it looks like the way we want to go, I'll help 
with the Win32 implementation.

I've also been trying to understand the Boost Property Map Library 
http://www.boost.org/libs/property_map/property_map.html.  Have you looked 
at that, and can you use it as mechanism?

--Beman