[boost] Re: Filesystem portable path rationale and use-cases

From: David Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-08-19 20:08:47

Walter Landry <wlandry_at_[hidden]> writes:

> Brian Gray <briangray_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>> Should we (do we?) have some spreadsheet enumerating various filesystem 
>> features, quirks, and limitations for whatever systems we can find, and 
>> using that as a reference regarding how to organize features like 
>> paths, file references, forks, or whatever else?  It might help us to 
>> back out of the code and re-examine the problem domain regardless of 
>> the current state of Boost.
>
> I've been thinking that maybe the best way to provide for portable
> paths is to have a bunch of flags that you can set.  So when you push
> something onto Beman's singleton stack, you can, for example, set the
> NTFS and VMS flags if you only care about those filesystems.
>
> However, that makes it difficult to extend to customized portability
> restrictions.  That might require some kind of function stack within
> each element of the singleton stack.  Then you can push the NTFS and
> VMS checkers onto that stack within the stack.

I _really_ hope we don't have any singleton stack which affects path
validation.  It sounds like a nightmare for any application involving
threads.

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
www.boost-consulting.com