Michael Marcin wrote:
David Abrahams wrote:
Bjørn Roald wrote:
Beman Dawes wrote:
* Change branch() to parent_path() * Change leaf() to child() * Change basename() to child_prefix() * Change extension() to child_extension()
At first glance, those names seem reasonable clear and self-consistent.
What's your take on that set?
I am not sure this is any good. Considder the path "../../a/b" and the meaning of parent and child.
The only sensible parent is in the middle and we don't even know it's name. Children are at both ends the implicit "." or "b".
The parent of '../../a/b' is '../../a' The parent of '../../a' is '../..' The parent of '../..' is probably '../../..'
If Beman intended '..' to be the result of the final transformation above, then we should be using something like pop() to describe it.
Doesn't leaf serve 2 functions? If the path points to a directory it returns most derived directory
It does not return a directory. We don't have a type that can represent a directory. We only have paths and strings.
(to make a bad analogy to class hierarchy). If the path points to a file it returns the filename.
No. In either case it returns the name of the thing that the path points to.
It seems to me that this duality makes it difficult to choose a meaningful name in the domain of file systems.
Personally I think I like
parent() - if this is a path to a subdirectory or a file returns a path one level above directory() otherwise returns *this
IIUC, this function is not supposed to touch the filesystem. It's supposed to be a pure path manipulation.
directory() - if this is a path to a file returns a path to the directory that contains the file otherwise returns *this
ditto
filename() - if this is a path to a file returns a string containing the filename otherwise returns an empty string
ditto
basename() - if this is a path to a file returns a string containing the filename without its extension otherwise returns an empty string
ditto
extension() - if this is a path to a file returns a string contains the filename without its basename otherwise returns an empty string
:) you get the idea. -- Dave Abrahams BoostPro Computing http://www.boostpro.com