At 11:59 AM 3/17/2005, Martin Bonner wrote:

----Original Message---- From: Robert Mathews [mailto:rmathews@envoyww.com] Sent: 17 March 2005 14:56 To: boost@lists.boost.org Subject: [boost] Re: [Boost-bugs] [ boost-Bugs-1164057 ]boost::filesystem::exists has bugs with UNC paths

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Initial Comment: boost::filesystem::exists(path("//computer")) always fails, even if the computer exists.

I shall call this, Issue A.

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boost::filesystem::exists(path("//computer/share")) always succeeds, even if the share doesn't exist.

... and this Issue B.

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Can anyone actually comment on when or if this bug might actually get fixed? It's an obvious bug, the fix is a trivial amount of work - it comes with a patch that I've tested on Win32 ....

Well, as I have indicated above, there are two separate and distinct issues.

Yes.

Issue B does seem like a bug to me. On the other hand, does your fix change it so that //computer/printer is reported as a filesystem? That would be a step backwards.

A true return from exists() doesn't make any claim that the path is to a filesystem. Consider this program: #include <iostream> #include <fstream> int main( int argc, char * argv[] ) { std::ofstream os( argv[1] ); if ( !os ) { std::cout << "Could not open " << argv[1] << std::endl; return 1; } os << "Hello, printer!\n"; return 0; } The network name of my machine is "bgd". It has a shared printer named "NECSuper". If I invoke the above program (named "test") like this: >test \\bgd\NECSuper A page gets printed with text: "Hello, printer!" And: >test con: Hello, printer! But: >test \\bgd Could not open \\bgd >test \\bgd\no_such Could not open \\bgd\no_such So I would likewise expect calls to exists("//bgd/NECSuper" ) and exists("con:") to return true, and a call to exists("//bgd/no_such") to return false. My initial feeling about exists("//bgd") is that it should return false, but I'm not very sure about that one and would like to hear more opinions. Thanks for the comments, --Beman