hi all im not sure if i just dont find the solution in the docs/list or its not supported in boost::filesystem which means using system functions given is a symlink like this '/tmp/subdir/thisisasymlink' which points to '/some/where/some/file/or/directory' what i need is: 1. the absolute path the symlink is pointing too, which is '/some/where/some/file/or/directory' 2. get the absolute path for something like '/tmp/../some/where/some/file/or/directory' which resolvs to '/some/where/some/file/or/directory' 3. if the absolute path is a subdirectory of some other directory in this example: if '/some/where/some/file/or/directory' is a subdirectory of '/tmp/subdir' which obviously isnt thx in advance