"Seb Martel" <smartel@real.com> wrote in message news:20051229114129035.00000002196@hagar...

...

...

2. Any chance of having a non-throwing version of directory_iterator (similar to status). Since such a common error like not having access to a directory throws an exception, every directory_iterator construction needs a try/catch. The recursive_directory_iterator is kind of useless since it will stop as soon as you get an "access denied". (Maybe a portable can_be_iterated function can be added)

Hum. Worth considering.

I would welcome a non-throwing iterator as well. Most of our path iterating routines are littered with try catches to handle cases that aren't truly exceptional.

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? Also, what should the interface to a non-throwing directory_iterator look like? First try - in addition to the current public members, add: directory_iterator( const path & ph, std::nothrow_t ); // Effects (in addition to normal construction): If error occurs, save errno, and make iterator == the end iterator. system_error_type error(); // Returns 0 if no constructor error, else errno saved by the constructor Comments? Thanks, --Beman