You seem to want a temporary stream (i.e. as you say, something to write into and read from). Does it really matter (for you) whether that is implemented by means of a file ? If so, what observable behavior should it have that makes it file-like ?
It's true that in many cases it wouldn't matter whether the stream outputs to a file or memory. I could imagine writing very large temp files that you might not want to have in memory. On the other hand, maybe a temp_file_handle class is more appropriate. The physical file would be deleted in the destructor. Using shared_ptr, it could be used by multiple objects. It could expose a path to the physical file to be used in any way necessary (even interprocess).
The subject, however, suggests a temporary file, i.e. an entity in a file system. That, too, is important, as a number of people have confirmed.
I don't see much relationship between them, in particular on an API level. Why would you lump them together ?
The original post was about streams in particular. But you're right that it'd be more general to group the files and the streams separately.
Regards, Stefan _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost