[boost] boost filesystem path as utf-8 revisited

Subject: [boost] boost filesystem path as utf-8 revisited
From: Rush Manbert (rush_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-11-06 14:55:46

In the original thread, I found this reply by Beman:
-----------------
> 
> 
> How exactly do I imbue UTF-8 codecvt in a path? I Googled around and
> couldn't find anything.

There are two approaches:

* If you always want all class path arguments and returned values with
a value type of char to be treated as being UTF-8 encoded, and aren't
worried about changing a potentially dangerous global, then do this:

   #include <boost/filesystem/detail/utf8_codecvt_facet.hpp>
   ...
   std::locale global_loc = std::locale();
   std::locale loc(global_loc, new
boost::filesystem::detail::utf8_codecvt_facet);
   boost::filesystem::path::imbue(loc);
-----------------

I do want what is described and would like to use this approach, but we use boost::filesystem all over the place and in our code we never do any sort of "global initialization", so I'm trying to figure out how to get the code snippet executed.

I can see two ways to approach this:
1) Add this code snippet to the boost::filesystem::path constructor. But is it too late then?
2) Define a class whose only purpose is to execute this code when it is constructed and arrange to have a static singleton instance of the class defined. In one of our libraries we need to be very careful about static class construction order, so this may be difficult.

I haven't dealt with this sort of issue in quite a while and I may be a little rusty. Any suggestions? Are there new goodies in C++ that might help me?

Thanks,
Rush