On 26.10.2011 16:57, Dave Abrahams wrote:
on Wed Oct 26 2011, "Alf P. Steinbach"<alf.p.steinbach+usenet-AT-gmail.com> wrote:
Those long paths can't be handled by Windows Explorer or most other software. Therefore, adding an ability to use them inadvertently, is at best strongly misguided. It would encourage novice developers to create files that ordinary users can't delete, move or rename.
The world has 26 years of Windows usage without such long paths, even after they were introduced in 1993.
So with 26 years of not needing them going on strong, and 18 years of not being used (by anyone other than script kiddies) despite being there, it is an established fact any competent developer don't need them and won't use them. And also, it is an established fact that using them creates trouble for the users. Don't even think about it -- and here I'm not talking about Boost, but about your own efforts.
Suppose you want to write a utility to clean up such paths in the filesystem? If they can't be represented, there's a problem, neh?
No problem: it would be a Windows-specific program, and also a rather small one, so use of the Windows API would be OK. I think what you're saying is that ideally Boost should support the full functionality of the native system. But Boost isn't doing that. And when the full functionality is not generally supported even by the vendor (Microsoft), it is a bit dangerous to support it. Because other software will not be able to handle it, and that includes e.g. the standard library of g++. ... Also, when I have cleaned up such files and folders in Windows, I have just used the command interpreter. E.g., "con" is a reserved device name (the console) and cannot usually be used to name a file or folder. But \\.\ or \\?\, I can't remember which, is like a "raw path". So, d:\> md dave d:\> cd dave d:\dave> md \\.\d:\dave\con d:\dave> dir Volume in drive D is DATA Volume Serial Number is A875-F9FD Directory of d:\dave 26.10.2011 17:24 <DIR> . 26.10.2011 17:24 <DIR> .. 26.10.2011 17:24 <DIR> con 0 File(s) 0 bytes 3 Dir(s) 233 918 234 624 bytes free d:\dave> rd con The system cannot find the file specified. d:\dave> rd \\.\d:\dave\con d:\dave> _ Of course I shouldn't really have shown such trick here, where I have impression that perhaps script kiddies lurking, but hey, it's my birthday. :-) Anyway, other tricks to handle troublesome paths include conversion to shortname form (the fix that I'm proposing to let Boost.Filesystem work with g++), which you can easily do using 'for' command, and using e.g. 'subst' command to define a logical drive for a directory in the path. Cheers, - Alf