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

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-11-12 20:45:10

At 07:11 PM 11/12/2004, Peter Dimov wrote:
 >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.

That's correct. For example, it doesn't have an escape mechanism to 
represent '/' in an element name. At least so far, no one has come up with 
any practical cases where that is a problem.

--Beman