Re: [boost] filesystem feature request: temporary path and files

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-01-02 21:03:59

At 01:08 PM 1/1/2003, Alberto Barbati wrote:
 >Hi,
 >
 >first of all, I want to thank Beman Dawes and all others that
 >contributed with the design and development of the Filesystem library.
 >It's a wonderful piece of work.

Thanks! A lot of people have been helping.

 >I just would like to propose a couple of additions that I believe are
 >very useful. Both features regard temporary files.

Ha! I've been waiting for that shoe to drop.

Yes, there is a real need. And as you point out, more that one need.

I've also run into a third need, the ability to great a new file, given a 
hint, but as a regular file with no "temporary" implications.

Some operating systems have a "file version" or "generation dataset" 
feature to deal with this. But it has to be simulated in POSIX and Windows 
filesystems by dancing around with file names. Something like, if the hint 
is "foo.txt", find the file "foo-#.txt" with the highest value of #, and 
then create a new file where # has been incremented by one.

Because of the race-condition issue mentioned by Thomas Witt the exact 
specs on these functions aren't easy.

I'm focused right now on trying to finish off the remaining issues with the 
current library. But if we can agree on a small set of add functions, they 
shouldn't be hard to add.

Thanks,

--Beman