[boost] bug fixes for boost::filesystem::exists on Win32

From: Robert Mathews (rmathews_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-03-14 14:58:43

Hi:

I was trying to do something simple with the boost::filesystem library on
Win32 && I noticed that it has trouble with UNC paths. I think I noticed 2
bugs with boost::filesystem::exists (possible patch attached). Finally, I
also had a question about what consistutes a "part" of a path.

Here's the context: I was trying to get all of the parts of a path, starting
at the front and moving to the end in order to find out at which point a
path was invalid. So, I wrote a path-checker that went something like this:

using namespace std;
namespace fs = boost::filesystem;

void check_path(const string iPath)
{
   fs::path::default_name_check(fs::native);
   fs::path aCurrentPath;
   for(fs::path::iterator aItr1=iPath.begin(); aItr1!=iPath.end(); aItr1++)
  {
      aCurrentPath /= *aItr1;
      bool aExists(fs::exists(aCurrentPath));
      if(!aExists)
      {
           cout << "Hey, this was invalid path and it failed at
aCurrentPath" << endl;
           return false;
      }
   }
   return true;
}

The function works fine if you give it paths like "D:/foo/bar", but a UNC
path like \\computername\share\foo\bar doesn't work. The reason is that the
path::iterator returns the following results for the beginning of the UNC
path:
"//computername"
"/"
"share"
"/"
"foo"
... etc
and "//computername" is not a valid path.

I've got a couple of questions about this:
1) Why is the separator "/" a separate part of the path? Shouldn't there be
a way to only get the directory parts of the path w/o the separators? Just
curious .. I couldn't find a reference to that in the discussion list.
2) boost::filesystem::exists("//computername") will return false, always.
That seems like the wrong answer, given that the path::iterator has returned
it as a part of the path. I notice that the filesystem code does otherwise
understand UNC paths otherwise.
3) boost::filesystem::exists("//computername/nofreelunch") will return true,
if even "nofreelunch" doesn't exist.

Looking at the implementation of filesystem::exists in boost
libs/filesystems/src/operations_posix_windows.cpp line 324, I'd like to
propose the following changes to fix cases 2 & 3.

To fix case 3 above, the error code return for an invalid share is not
PATH_NOT_FOUND, but ERROR_BAD_NETPATH. That's a simple addition to the list
of error codes to check. That should be uncontroversial.
To fix case 2 above, one must notice that you have a UNC path with 1
element - ie, a computer name. At the point you can either follow the hint
in the code and simply return true, or you can call a different WIN32
function to see if the server exists.

Attached is a proposed patch for both issues.

Thanks.

begin 666 operations_posix_windows.cpp.patch
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