[boost] Re: relative/absolute paths in filesystem library

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-11-24 20:27:36

At 02:15 PM 11/24/2002, Matthias Troyer wrote:

 >I have started using the boost filesystem library in our application
 >codes and encountered a problem that could be solved by adding either
 >of the three functions
 >
 >bool is_relative() const;
 >bool is_absolute() const;
 >void make_absolute();
 >
 >to the path class.
 >
 >Let me motivate this by an example: if the user specifies a relative
 >path the file system library automatically prepends it with the result
 >of a call to initial_directory(). In parallel programs however, even
 >when the file system is shared, the result of a call to
 >initial_directory() need not be the same on all nodes of a parallel
 >machine. Thus I need to convert all relative paths to absolute ones
 >before sending the path to another node.
 >
 >At the moment I check for this by asking whether the first character is
 >a '/', but this works only under  Unix variants but not under Windows.
 >Although we do not run our codes under Windows, other users of our
 >libraries might and I would thus like to have a portable method, which
 >could be implemented through either of the three functions mentioned
 >above. Neither of the functions should be more than a single-line
 >function.
 >
 >What do you think about that?

These suggestions came up during the formal review, and work is underway on 
adding them to class path.

The branch fs_review gives a snapshot of work-in-progress. It isn't stable 
at the moment, but progress is definitely being made. I'm hoping to get a 
lot of work done on it this coming week.

Because of the many code-breaking changes being made as a result of the 
formal review, it might be better to wait a bit before using the library in 
important code.

--Beman