Lawrence Spector wrote:
Correct. That is the issue. It's not just wildcards, it also seems that directory_iterator won't handle a single file either (e.g.: C:\config.sys). The file_iterator in regex just seems like it's in the wrong place. I also think this is common functionality that one can't reasonably be expected to know exists without deep digging (my coworker found it by suspecting that it would likely call FindFirstFileA in its implementation and searching on that).
Also, the file_iterator in regex doesn't seem to precisely follow the directory_iterator's style. For example, you can't pass a boost::filesystem::path object to the file_iterator. Another issue is that there's no wide version of the file_iterator.
I do think this needs some cleaning up, if for no other reason than it seems inconsistent.
Well it's a common enough task that we really should do something about it: the file-iterators in Boost.Regex are old pre-boost code used in a now-deprecated part of the regex lib. I guess what we really need is a new library submission built on top of Boost.Filesystem. Any takers? John.