From: "Peter Dimov" <pdimov@mmltd.net>
Beman Dawes wrote:
I've completed an analysis of expectations for the exists() and is_xxx() family of functions, and the previously suggested status() and symlink_status() functions.
See http://www.esva.net/~beman/filesystem_operations_predicates.htm
One quick comment about status(). I don't like the fact that the user effectively has to read a global variable to obtain the error code. I'd prefer something along the lines of
status_flag status( path const & p, int * error = 0 );
or packing the error code in the return value.
I also thought about that. system_error_code() can certainly be made threadsafe, and all commands can set a thread-specific error code. But it does mean that it is easy to ignore problems in calling status() and that one must read the error code before calling it again. Perhaps the flags could be accumulated with the error code in a class that has a safe-bool conversion? -- Rob Stewart stewart@sig.com Software Engineer http://www.sig.com Susquehanna International Group, LLP using std::disclaimer;