Re: [boost] Filesystem: remove_all should not follow symlinks

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-11-21 16:45:04

At 09:03 AM 11/21/2003, Walter Landry wrote:

 >Beman Dawes <bdawes_at_[hidden]> wrote:
 >> [Help needed from Win32 programmers on the following.]
 >>
 >> * Can is_symbolic_link() just return false on Windows?
 >
 >I'm not sure what the general answer is, but in this case you only
 >care about whether a link can be confused with a directory.

Yes. If general links facilities can't be added, the fallback is to provide 
a POSIX-specific fix.

 >  That is,
 >can is_directory() return true for shortcuts?  A similar question
 >arises for exists().  What does that return if the target of the
 >shortcut doesn't exist?

Good questions. For both reference-counted and symbolic links, and for 
every operation, we need to know if the operation has shallow or deep 
semantics.

What keeps happening is that when I approach from the viewpoint of "How do 
various operating systems behave?", I end up with a headache and little 
forward progress.

I think I'll try the approach of designing what functionality and behavior 
we might like the Filesystem library to have (essentially POSIX-like), and 
then seeing how much can be implemented on both Windows and POSIX.

--Beman