Beman Dawes wrote:
I agree to the extent that some of the cases when the current implementation throws can be eliminated. For example, is_directory() can safely be changed to return false rather than throwing in the case of a non-existant path. (And we would add a similar is_path()). But I just can't convince myself that silently swallowing an I/O error would be safe And given the plan to add a status() function which can provide error swallowing behavior, a programmer can get that behavior if really, really, required.
I find it much more natural for stat() to throw: attributes stat( path const & p ); because on error it can't return a valid value. If you fix the original defect that directory iteration only gives names without attributes, the use of is_directory in iteration loops will be eliminated. We'll then be left with its other uses, which may be easier to analyze.