RE: [boost] Filesystem Review

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-09-23 15:20:11

At 03:46 PM 9/23/2002, Jeff Garland wrote:

 >>  >* It is inconvenient that a trailing '/' is not allowed on directory
 >path
 >>
 >>  >  construction of POSIX paths.  This does not seem like 'invalid path
 >>  >  syntax'.
 >>  >  As an example, if I type 'ls /home/foo' or ls '/home/foo/' 
(assuming
 >>  >  /home/foo is a directory) the result is the listing of the 
directory
 >>  >  contents.  If /home/foo is a file then I get an error.
 >>
 >> Maybe disallowing / at the end is being too picky. It doesn't really 
hurt
 >
 >> anything. I don't have a strong feeling one way or the other.
 >
 >Ok, then I would prefer to allow it because otherwise a program
 >taking human input has to be certain to strip this off to get the
 >'expected behavior'.  For example if you write a program run from
 >a command line that takes a directory path as an argument and happen
 >to use the bash autocomplete feature (which automatically tacks on a /
 >to directory names) if your program doesn't strip the / it gets
 >an exception.  As you can see, this has happened to me :-)

OK. I'll change it.

 >>  >* The 'Representation Example' link in the path documentation is 
busted
 >>  >  everywhere.
 >>
 >> Hum. I don't see anything wrong. It works with Netscape 3.x and IE 5.x. 

 >> What browser are you using? Maybe spaces in bookmarks aren't supported 
by
 >
 >> all browsers.
 >
 >Konqueror on Linux.  And, yes I confirmed it is the space that is the
 >problem.

Grrr.... Dave Abrahams asked me about spaces awhile ago, and I said they 
were OK.  I thought so because the validator was accepting them.

 >>  >     std::fstream f(p);  //open a network connection and download
 >>  >     ...
 >>
 >> I don't know the committee would feel about fstream being extended to 
do
 >> that, but your real point is that path has headroom to expand to other
 >> uses, and I agree completely on that.
 >
 >Yes, in retrospect it probably should be something like std::http_stream,
 >which is yet another sorely needed C++ library given the role of the
 >internet these days.  Of course we need still need a socket library
 >first....

Yes,

--Beman