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

From: Jeff Garland (jeff_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-02-23 22:32:10

>  >write portable traversal/management program without being able to
>  >distinguish >files from directories portably.
>
> OK, I've changed the doc to make that clearer.

Good :-)

> No, I'm assuming 'compose' is supplied - it is the first of the "path
> operations" described in the document.

Ah, sorry, I missed that....

> I've been writing some trial scripts.  The compose function (or functions)
> have to be specified very carefully or either portability or usefulness or
> both suffer.

That's a very good idea b/c I agree it is tricky to get right.  I would imagine
that in the implementation there may ultimately need to be some sort of
filesystem traits that provide information like char separation patterns,
maximum file name lengths, invalid chars, etc.  It would probably be helpful for
some of these to ultimately be available in the interface so that a library user
could do nifty things like portably process paths using regex.  But that's the
gravy, what you have put together already would solve a big batch of problems.

Jeff