Re: [boost] Review Request: Filesystem Library

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-08-05 10:09:26

At 09:03 PM 8/4/2002, Chuck Allison wrote:

 >The only place I've seen difficulty with '/' in file names is in the
 >command
 >line in an MS-DOS shell (and in the old days we could even change '\' to
 >'/'
 >with the SWITCHAR INT20 service). I still routinely use makefiles with 
'/'
 >targets under Windows XP. Where does it say that the filesystem doesn't
 >like
 >'/', so I can get up-to-date?

You are up-to-date:-)

The question was whether or not '/' is a valid character as part of a NTFS 
file name. It isn't, because NTFS (and a number of other operating systems) 
treat '/' as a separator.

Thus,

      "foo/bar"

is always seen as a file named "bar" is a directory named "foo".  These 
OS's do not allow a file to be named "foo/bar", and their designers choose 
not to provide any escape mechanism to say "in this case treat '/' as part 
of the name rather than a separator".

I followed the same practice in the Filesystem Library, and provide no 
escape to allow a '/' in a filename in the portable format.  There is also 
an implementation defined "system_specific" constructor, so you can always 
construct a name with a '/' in it if the implementation allows it because 
of local OS rules.

--Beman