Re: [boost] Re: filesystem exists/is_directory suggestion

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-09-10 14:47:33

At 02:19 PM 9/10/2004, Peter Dimov wrote:
 >Beman Dawes wrote:
 >>   An attempt to query the attributes, such as
 >>   is_directory("pagefile.sys") would throw an exception, which can be
 >>   avoided by checking is_accessible("pagefile.sys").
 >
 >I'm not sure why would anyone want to omit the is_accessible check before 

 >calling is_directory.

In software which is specified to cope with even rare eventualities without 
recourse to a general error catch, it probably shouldn't be omitted.

In applications which run in a very controlled and tightly specified 
environment, anything not being accessible is virtually certain to be an 
error condition, so just letting is_directory() throw is best for those 
apps.

Another question is which other query functions also need to be protected 
by an is_accessible() test in some applications?

--Beman