[boost] Making Boost.Filesystem work with GENERAL filenames with g++ in Windows (a solution)

Subject: [boost] Making Boost.Filesystem work with GENERAL filenames with g++ in Windows (a solution)
From: Alf P. Steinbach (alf.p.steinbach+usenet_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-10-25 09:41:55

First, apologies if I'm posting to the wrong group/list; if so then 
please redirect me.

IMHO access to files is a crucial part of Boost.Filesystem. However, 
with Boost 1.47, and using g++ 4.4.1 in Windows 7, 
boost::filesystem::ifstream etc. fail to open or create files with 
non-ANSI characters. It works fine with Visual C++; it FAILS with g++ 
4.4.1, which is the one bundled with the Code::Blocks IDE.

The failure probably has nothing to do with the g++ version: it's due to 
g++ not offering the Visual C++ wchar_t oriented extensions to the 
standard iostreams (Boost.Filesystem uses these Visual C++ extensions).

I stumbled onto this while I was writing about using Unicode in C++ 
programming in Windows.

I wrote up a technical solution in section 5, starting on page 16, of 
that work-in-progress document, available on Google Docs at:

 
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B2oiI2reHOh4ZjdkNmUyNDctNzI1Yi00NmJjLThiMzgtYmI3OGE0ZmE5MDg2&hl=en

Essentially, the fix I ended up with, full source code given in the 
above doc, uses Windows short file names if (1) there is no wide 
character support and if furthermore (2) the filename can't be perfectly 
translated to ANSI. The C++ implementation's support for wide chars is 
automatically detected using C++98-compatible code.

I do not know what to do with this.

But considering that Boost.Filesystem is slated for later inclusion in 
the C++ standard library (or at least into TR2), I think it would be 
nice if it is able to give access to all accessible files in Windows, 
also with g++, so that we don't end up with a file handling part of the 
standard library that can't handle files in general; hence this posting 
and plea for advice  --  what more should I do, if anything?

Cheers,

- Alf