These seem like reasonable requests, although I'd have to check the std::back_inserter to be 100% sure.
I have checked this using a wrapper around path as follows template<class String, class Traits> struct rob_basicpath : boost::filesystem::basic_path<String, Traits> { typedef string_type& reference; typedef const string_type& const_reference; inline void push_back(const_reference path) { *this /= path; } }; This allowed me to use the following code as expected (which strips . characters from the path) const boost::filesystem::path path("dir1/./dir2/./dir3"); rob_path rpath; std::remove_copy(path.begin(), path.end(), std::back_inserter(rpath), ".");
Note however that path has some but not all of the characteristics of a standard container. I'd want to see persuasive use cases for adding functionality - just making path more like a std container without good reason is likely to lead to interface bloat without offsetting benefits.
My reasoning for this is as follows: 1. path is wrapper around a string, which is what would be used in the absence of path object. String supports this interface and using path should not be a step backwards. 2. A variety of tasks I envisage on a path can be neatly and succinctly implemented using std algorithms. In particular, I have several uses for copy or remove_copy to create similar paths with a slight difference. The ability to use a back_inserter allow paths to be built up from other paths or any container of strings. Without this, my solution for removing '.' involved the same code but I had to insert into a vector first and later iterate through this to create the new path.
A use case would make this [pop_back()] more compelling.
My code above to remove '.' was part of a 'canonicalize' function which removed both '.' and '..' where possible. (This may be a candidate for a convenience function within the library?) My solution was as follows std::vector<std::wstring> parts; BOOST_FOREACH(std::wstring part, path) { if (L"." == part) continue; if (L".." == part && parts.size() && L".." != parts.back()) parts.pop_back(); else parts.push_back(part); } boost::filesystem::wpath simple; BOOST_FOREACH(std::wstring part, parts) simple /= part; return simple; Whilst this is IMO reasonably elegant, I still have the extra step of building my new path in a vector, then creating the path from this. The addition of pop_back() to path would allow the path to be built up without the vector. Given that path allows the path to be considered as a container of path elements, I would like to see this extended. A reverse iterator would be nice to step back from the given path up to the root. Pop_back would equate to stepping back to the parent directory and seems a useful feature. Given that there exists a function to remove the filename, this also seems to be relatively easy to implement (as an inlined function?) I have only recently discovered filesystem::path and, given my current project's requirements for directory manipulation, this is a fantastic help. Cheers Rob