I am trying to use Boost.Filesystem and have run in to some issues with the API which may be actual problems or a lack of understanding on my part.
1) What is the generic way to create current directory and parent directory relative paths, e.g. "." and ".."? Currently for current directory I use
boost::filesystem::path(boost::filesystem::path::string_type(1,boost::filesystem::slashboost::filesystem::path::value))
which is a bit verbose. Parent directory relative path is the same with '2' instead of '1'. Further, it presumes that string_type has a constructor taking a repeat count and a character which may not be true in all cases. I would define these functionally as path instances which, if passed to current_path, would stay in the same directory or move to the parent directory respectively. Is this usage too file system specific to be included in the library? Is there a superior way to create such paths?
2) Why isn't there a path constructor / generator which takes a pair of path element iterators? E.g. like
path make_path(path::iterator x, path::iterator y) {
path zret;
for ( ; x != y ; ++x ) zret /= *x;
return zret;
}
3) I tried to write my own templated make_path but I don't see how to either use the path class as the template parameter or compute the path class from its iterator. That is, I want to use
path::iterator x,y; // set somehow
path p = make_path(x,y);
Implemetation 1:
template < typename Path > Path make_path(Path::iterator x, Path::iterator y) { ... }
This fails because Path can not be deduced from the use of Path::iterator instances.
Implementation 2:
template < typename PathIter> ??? make_path(PathIter x, PathIter y) {...}
I don't see how to specify the return type given the type of an iterator. I think it would be reasonable to put this in the iterator class
typedef boost::BOOST_FILE_SYSTEM_NAMESPACE::basic_path