[Boost-users] Re: Feature request for boost::filesystem

I decided not to use boost::filesystem, because it does not support Unicode. There's a thread in the archives about it, explaining that Unicode was ignored, because it was specific to Windows, and this is intended to be a portable library. However, I think the developers have missed the point that the Windows file system uses Unicode natively, so boost::filesystem is not really portable to it. A more useful solution, in my opinion, would be one that allowed the user to choose which char type to use, like boost::regex. Keith MacDonald

"Delfin Rojas" wrote in message news:200406221823.i5MINpjj020023@patti.moodlogic.com... Hello everybody,

I'm new to this mailing list. The first thing I should say is I love boost and I think it is a great library and I'm really thankful to all its contributors. Now, that being said, I'm sending this email to ask about a feature in the boost::filesystem library that I believe would be valuable to have.

Currently the only library that supports file and directory operations in boost is boost::filesystem. Thanks tot hat library I don't have to use platform specific file manipulation rutines for things like copying a file, deleting all files in a directory, iterating through a directory, etc. Now, all the operations in boost::filesystem take a boost::filesystem::path as an object encapsulating a platform independent "path" to a file or a directory. My problem is this path can only be built using a single char (ANSI) character string. This doesn't allow me to use boost::filesystem in windows with Unicode support since I cannot convert a wide string (UTF16) path to a boost::filesystem::path object. I believe it must not be too difficult to add Unicode path support to boost::filesystem since only the "path" class would need to be modified I think.

Another small feature I think could be interesting is a convenience function to set the current path (cd operation). There is a function already to get the current path but not to set it.

I do not know if this is the right group to ask for these features. If not please point me in the right direction.

Thanks a lot

Delfin Rojas Delfin@moodlogic.com

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