To nail down the semantics of status(), let's try a different approach. Some of the difficulty may be a matter of miscommunication, so perhaps actual code will add clarity. Perhaps Peter or others who have views on what the semantics of boost::filesystem::status() should be could change the code below to implement those semantics. Hopefully that will eliminate any confusion as to exactly meaning. --Beman --------- status_flag status_imp( const char * path, system_error_type * ec ) { struct stat path_stat; if ( ::stat( path, &path_stat ) != 0 ) { if ( ec != 0 ) *ec = errno; return ((errno == ENOENT) || (errno == ENOTDIR)) ? fs::not_found_flag : fs::error_flag; } system_error_type result(0); if ( S_ISDIR( path_stat.st_mode ) ) result |= fs::directory_flag; if ( S_ISREG( path_stat.st_mode ) ) result |= fs::file_flag; return result; }