Re: [boost] Filesystem attributes

From: Dietmar Kuehl (dietmar_kuehl_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-03-03 13:44:55

Hi,
Jan Langer wrote:

> i think thats a possible solution. this opaque type should be impl.
> defined and act nearly like a string.

No! It shall be impossible to act directly on this type: That's
effectively a consequence of being opaque anyway :-) That is, the
type is only declared in user visible headers. It definition resides
in private implementation files for the directory iterator and the
directory entry. One major benefit of this hiding is that operating
system specific declaration do not leak into user's applications.

 
> so the posix impl. can typedef it to string, because the name is the
> only attribute related information one usually gets during iteration
> (except the inode number and a unusable type information)

It shall hold the file attributes. The file name is just one of these.
There is other data like access permissions, file type, size, access
times, etc.

The opaque type would be useful for users only as a key to corresponding
property maps accessing the various file attributes.
-- 
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