mkstemp

[nobody]

Could you add a function similar to mkstemp in
boost::filesystem?

It would be interesting if it could receive an
boost::filesystem::path or an std::string as input and
return a ofstream and a path or a string as output

jesus.malo@bsc.es

[Dave Abrahams]

Can't reassign to Beman until he logs into Trac at ​http://svn.boost.org and sets his email address.

[Beman Dawes]

I'm considering #590 and #1090 as indications of interest and need, but feel that there are various details to be worked out first. mkstemp and similar functions seem pretty dated. The C++ approach suggested by #1090 is appealing, but more work needs to be done. Suggestions welcome.

--Beman

[Beman Dawes]

No progress yet. Needs a design that abstracts away differences between POSIX and Windows. Contributions and/or suggestions welcome!

--Beman

[Andrey Semashev]

Not sure if this applies to this ticket, but I've been in need of temp files support many times, too. So here are my thoughts.

Maybe, on the low level, such functionality could be reached through fstreams extension: if it was possible to construct fstream from FILE* then the tmpfile function could be used to create temporary files. On the higher level a wrapper function could be provided, such as:

void open_temp_file(fstream& strm);

The function would internally call tmpfile or whatever other API to create the file and attach it to the stream.

Scoped files, while they look appealing for some cases, are limiting when the lifetime of the stream has to span across scopes. A simple wrapper derived from the fstream and on top of open_temp_file can be provided, but it should not be the only way to do it.

[Beman Dawes]

The unique_path() function in Version 3 addresses the problem. Version 3 will ship with 1.44.

Thanks,

--Beman