If an "exists(directory_iterator)" overload was supplied, it would be really easy to write "exists(itr)" when you meant "exists(itr->path())".
I assume you mean exists(*itr) instead of exists(itr->path())
Functions with different semantics should have different syntax. At least that was the theory.
Don't agree in this case but it is your library. :-)
Is the litter just to deal with exceptions coming out of directory_iterator constructors? Or are there other use cases needing excessive try/catch blocks?
"exists", all "is_*" functions and direcory_iterator all throws on access denied so basicly a try/catch is needed for any use of these (at least for me). Sometimes I can let the exception propagate up to a top level catch handling filsystem corruption, network problems and race conditions but generally not. With the earlier code "exists" didn't throw and I created my own non-throwing overload of is_directory "is_directory(path&, bool errorreturn)" but with the new code I use status instead. Ideally for me would be the following // throws on error is_directory(const path&); // never throws (or is an implementation allowed to not cache status?) is_directory(const directory_iterator&); // don't throw and return errorreturn on error is_directory(status, bool errorreturn = false); Regarding the non-throwing directory_iterator. Couldn't the constructor return something that compares equal to the end iterator but is carrying a status member.