on Sat Jan 26 2013, Andrey Semashev <andrey.semashev-AT-gmail.com> wrote:
On Friday 25 January 2013 18:45:30 Dave Abrahams wrote:
on Fri Jan 25 2013, Andrey Semashev <andrey.semashev-AT-gmail.com> wrote:
IMHO, path should not pretend to be a container. Things like push_back, insert, erase don't make sense with respect to it.
As soon as you can iterate it and append path elements (and you can now), push_back, insert, and erase make wonderful sense. I understand exactly what those operations should mean, and I have use cases to boot!
It could provide begin/end iterators over underlying characters but just to implement other algorithms. Iterating over path elements (i.e. what is currently achieved with begin/end) should probably be an external tool, like an iterator adaptor or a view on top of the path object. In the end it should become just a thin wrapper over a string, with a few path-related functions.
Why? IME path manipulation almost universally occurs on directory boundaries, so xposing a character-based interface as the primary one for path seems counter-productive. IMO there should be a way to get to the underlying characters if you want them, but the primary interface should be a container of pahth elements.
In my previous reply to Yakov I explained why I don't see path as a container. You seem to want to work with paths like with vector<string_ref> but I don't think this is portable. You don't know what the string_ref contains and what restrictions apply to the content on the particular platform.
I don't care about those restrictions. I'm happy with the set of algorithms that will work when string_refs can be compared.
E.g. on Windows it can contain a subdirectory name or a drive prefix (e.g. C:).
I'm well aware. It wouldn't make a bit of difference to my use case or many others.
Also, working with extensions or otherwise modifying file names like adding suffixes, etc. fall below the vector<string_ref> interface, to the character level.
Yes. So what? We already have strings for that purpose. -- Dave Abrahams BoostPro Computing Software Development Training http://www.boostpro.com Clang/LLVM/EDG Compilers C++ Boost