RE: [boost] [filesystem] size() on directory?

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-02-03 15:13:07

At 12:48 PM 2/3/2004, Powell, Gary wrote:

 >Beman wrote:
 >
 >How should size( "foo" ) behave if "foo" is a directory?
 >
 >1) Throw. The function should be renamed file_size().
 >
 >2) Return 0. Directories don't strictly speaking have a size.
 >
 >3) Return the number of entries in the directory. Directories are really
 >just containers; so of course they have a size.
 >-------------------------------------------------
 >Gary Replies:
 >  #1, while an OS can implement directories as a file of information, I
 >think its conceptually wrong for this function to ask for its "size". 
When
 >iterating through a file system you should first guarantee that the file
 >name is a file and not that of a sub directory.
 >
 >  The 4th answer would be to return the total size of all the files 
within
 >the directory. But I think that's also conceptually confusing as well.

Agreed.

(1) is the behavior in the preliminary version that is now in CVS.

--Beman