Re: [Boost-users] [filesystem] function to determine available space

Hello Beman Dawes, Beman Dawes wrote:

"Pavel Vozenilek" wrote in message news:dg4gv5$mji$1@sea.gmane.org...

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"Beman Dawes" wrote:

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I'm planning to add a filesystem function to determine available disk space. Perhaps something like:

struct space_status { boost::uintmax_t available; // free space available to user boost::uintmax_t total; // total space on volume };

space_status filesystem_space( const path & p );

The single uintmax_t may not be able to capture all those free gigabytes. Better use two values.

Hum... Are there any systems anymore that support disk drives that don't have 64-bit uintmax_t?

Although I don't see **currently** a problem with usual uintmax_t definitions, I have a more defensive view on this: It has happend in history that hardware development has been quicker than software development and it was not unusual that suddenly a system needed to replace their "atomic" type used representation of system related properties (e.g. address space of memory) by means of a "conglomerated" type with internal logic to handle this situation. This might happen quicker than we believe if a sudden technological jump invalidates current interpolations of disk-sizes. A safer method would be to provide a simple type(def), e.g. disk_size_t with some described operations which are guaranteed to be provided (at least EqualityComparable and LessComparable ;-)). This makes it easier to handle special OPs and costs nothing, if in the moment its simply a typedef to uintmax_t. Just my 0.02 Euro cent Daniel Krügler