Edward Diener wrote:
I can not determine from the Filesystem documentation, nor the reference documentation which comes with it, what is the acceptable syntax for the native pathname format. It appears one must start the native pathname format with //: in order for it to be recognized,
The explicit //: form is not needed for POSIX, Windows, and most other operating systems since their native syntax will implicitly be recognized. The explicit //: form is only needed if you are dealing with an operating system where a slash is a valid part of a name, rather than a separator.
but I can not tell from what appears to me to be very confusing documentation whether this is so for the Boost Fileystem implementation. This would mean, let's say under Windows, that "c:\afile" would not be recognized but that "//:c:\afile" would be recognized, as far as I can make out from the documentation. It sure is confusing IMO.
I think you meant "c:\\afile". On Windows, "c:\\afile" will be recognized correctly. AFAIK, there are no cases for either Windows or POSIX-like operating systems where the Boost implementation will fail to implicitly recognize the native format.
Can anybody clarify how this works for Filesystem and/or where there is a clear explanation of how it works in the documentation ?
I assume you have read http://www.boost.org/libs/filesystem/doc/tr2_proposal.html#Pathname-formats If so, and you still have questions, please post them here. Thanks, --Beman