[boost] More functions for Filesystem

From: Walter Landry (wlandry_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-08-31 19:57:18

Greetings,

I have recently upgraded from 1.32 to the current prerelease, and it
feels like filesystem is missing a few convenience functions.

  1) readlink: There is a way to create a symlink, but then no way to
     query it later.

  2) nlink: Similarly, we can create a hard link, but can not query
     its link count.

  3) copy_symlink: Note that this requires readlink in order to
     function.

  4) copy_directory: create_directory creates directories with the
     mode S_IRWXU|S_IRWXG|S_IRWXO.  That seems like a security hole
     waiting to happen.  This would at least provide a way of
     inheriting access properties.

  5) copy(): This would check what the first argument is and invoke
     the appropriate function (copy_file, copy_symlink,
     copy_directory).

Except for nlink, I have already implemented all of these functions
because I needed them.  Is there any interest in getting these
functions into the filesystem library?

Cheers,
Walter Landry
wlandry_at_[hidden]