https://svn.boost.org/trac10/ticket/298 <pre class="wiki">As is currently discussed on the boost mailinglist, cygwin is supposed to support windows paths (at least, when compiled with BOOST_WINDOWS, which is currently the default). I understand that Beman, the author of boost::filesystem, wants it that way. However, boost::filesystem does not accept a path like "/usr" (fs::exists fails in that case), when compiled with BOOST_WINDOWS and it *also* doesn't accept windows paths, like "c:/cygwin/usr", "C:\\cygwin\\usr" or anything remotely 'windows' like, because it throws when you try to construct a fs::path with a colon in it! As a result, one can ONLY construct usable paths on cygwin in the very non-portable format "/cggdrive/c/cygwin/usr" which is neither POSIX (on linux the same path would be "/usr") nor native (the _users_ of the application will view this path as "C:\cygwin\usr"). It is 100% cygwin specific. OR one has to construct paths on cygwin using 'native' all the time (or no_check) as path checker, because even windows_name doesn't work :/ Consider the following code: #include &lt;iostream&gt; #include &lt;boost/filesystem/path.hpp&gt; #include &lt;boost/filesystem/operations.hpp&gt; int main() { try { boost::filesystem::path p("C:\\cygwin\\usr", &amp;boost::filesystem::windows_name); } catch(std::exception const&amp; error) { std::cerr &lt;&lt; "Exception: " &lt;&lt; error.what() &lt;&lt; std::endl; } } With the following result: Exception: boost::filesystem::path: invalid name "C:\cygwin\usr" in path: "C:\cygwin\usr" Same thing with any other variation that starts with 'C:'. I believe that this is a structural failure of boost::filesystem, revealing a major error in the design. A re-design seems to be in order before it can be considered to be usable in multi-platform applications. The most important problem with the current design is that a single type (namely fs::path) is being used for effectively two different types: canonical paths and native paths. A new design should provide a new type, fs::native_path that cannot be mixed with the canonical path representation. This native_path should have builtin checks that are native and fs::path should only check for portability (and allow relaxation of that when lesser OS need to be supported). </pre> en-us /htdocs/site/boost.png https://svn.boost.org/trac10/ticket/298 Trac 1.4.3 beman_dawes Wed, 30 Nov 2005 22:31:05 GMT https://svn.boost.org/trac10/ticket/298#comment:1 https://svn.boost.org/trac10/ticket/298#comment:1 <ul> <li><strong>status</strong> <span class="trac-field-old">assigned</span> → <span class="trac-field-new">closed</span> </li> </ul> Ticket beman_dawes Wed, 30 Nov 2005 22:33:35 GMT