Re: [boost] boost filesystem path as utf-8 revisited

Subject: Re: [boost] boost filesystem path as utf-8 revisited
From: Rush Manbert (rush_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-11-09 09:15:02

On Nov 6, 2012, at 11:55 AM, Rush Manbert wrote:

> 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
> 

For the record, what I had been hoping for was a suggestion of a way to do this setup at compile time, and I'm not doing the work so I don't have the sources to play with. But I suggested that my colleague should look at what the imbue call does and see if we could do the equivalent. He came back with this change:

  // PAL 11/8/2012 - Default to UTF-8 encoding for path names
  // std::locale path_locale(std::locale(), new windows_file_codecvt);
  std::locale path_locale(std::locale(), new boost::filesystem::detail::utf8_codecvt_facet);

so that's what we're going to do. Unless someone (Beman?) tells me that it's not a good idea. ;-)

- Rush