Re: [boost] Re: Boost.Filesystem: naming, canonical path

From: Thomas Witt (witt_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-08-11 15:03:15

David Abrahams wrote:

> Thomas Witt <witt_at_[hidden]> writes:
> 
> 
>>What would be the native representation for the following native
> 
>                     ^^^^^^                                  ^^^^^^

Sigh!

> 
>>paths
>>
>>C:\C\foo
>>\C\foo
>>C:\foo
> 
> 
> Not a very interesting challenge.
> 
>     "C:\C\foo"
>     "\C\foo"
>     "C:\foo"

Grrr...

> 
> I assume you mean the portable representation of the native paths:
> 
>     "/C/C/foo"
>     "/" + *current_path().begin() + "/C/foo" (**)
>     "/C/foo"
> 
> (**) There is no way to represent "The foo subdirectory of the C
> directory of the current drive" portably, because it isn't a portable
> concept.

I would argue that different drives are the non-portable concept.

>  Therefore, we could pick other sensible answers for the
> middle path, e.g.:
> 
> 
>        1. Exception is thrown
> 
>        2. "./C/foo"
> 
>        3. "/*/C/foo" where '*' is some character not normally allowed
>           in portable paths.
>     

I think your proposal is clearly inferior to what we currently have. 
With your solution the set of valid portable paths is dependent on the 
set of valid roots on a given platform. I.e. all portable(syntax) paths 
starting with a slash are essentially non-portable.

Thomas