Re: [Boost-users] Using filesystem::remove with wildcards

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] Using filesystem::remove with wildcards
From: Norbert Wenzel (norbert.wenzel.lists_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-01-20 04:40:31

On 01/20/2012 05:13 AM, toran wrote:
> I am having trouble deleting files with boost::filesystem. Following code does
> not work for me (and I can't find the doc that explains how to do it).
>
> boost::filesystem::path pt("somepath");
> pt /= ("*.data");
> boost::filesystem::remove(pt);
>
> pt variable points to the valid set of files, but removal does not happened.
>
> I will appreciate an advise and may be pointing me to the right place in the
> docs. Thanks.

As far as I know there is no such thing as wildcard replacement in 
filesystem. So unless your file is not actually named "*.data" it won't 
be found.

If you're trying to delete every .data file in a directory, you'd need 
to use the (recursive_)directory_iterator and the .extension() member 
function of the path object. And be aware that the iterator is 
invalidated when you remove a file.

See this similar question at Stackoverflow: 
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1257721/can-i-use-a-mask-to-iterate-files-in-a-directory-with-boost

And be aware that filesystem::remove() returns a bool indicating if the 
file existed, so it'd be easy to check in your code. See 
http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_48_0/libs/filesystem/v3/doc/reference.html#remove

Norbert