Re: [boost] Re: [filesystem] Major changes before standardization

From: Peter Dimov (pdimov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-11-12 19:11:43

Beman Dawes wrote:
> At 01:54 PM 11/12/2004, Peter Dimov wrote:
>> Beman Dawes wrote:
>>> A single path class approach is really interesting. Note, however,
>>> that it
>>> is a good bit more complicated than your synopsis above because of
>>> the need to provide templated member functions to handle user
>>> defined types.
>>
>> Is there _really_ such a need?
>
> That's a good question. I personally think the need for UDT support
> is too marginal to worry about.

The interesting thing is that I can see a need for a generic path library 
(filesystem-independent). It even makes perfect sense for this library to be 
templated on the character type (because the operations do not depend on a 
specific type) and if I squint just right I see some benefits in adding a 
'class Tr = path_traits<Ch>' parameter that will supply the path separator 
character and the escape character (if any).

However I don't see how such a generic path library can be separated from 
the filesystem code. The generic grammar is simply not expressive enough to 
handle all native path quirks.