id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	milestone	component	version	severity	resolution	keywords	cc
6874	Path should have a size() member function	Gary Sanders <lex21@…>	Beman Dawes	"It would be convenient for filesystem::path to provide a size() member function, especially for circumstances that require interface with legacy windows apps and functions.

Consider the traditional windows path buffer:
{{{
wchar_t legacy [_MAX_PATH];
}}}
and a boost path:
{{{
boost::filesystem::path path = L""<...>"";
}}}
In order to ensure that buffer overruns do not occur when copying into a legacy buffer, assuming that querying the size of the wstring() member function is the same as the c_str() size, code similar to the following is required:

{{{
if (path.wstring().size()+1 <= _MAX_PATH)
{
	wcscpy(&legacy[0], path.c_str());
}
else
{
	// buffer would overrun, do something else ...
}
}}}

It would be more convenient, and arguably safer, if filesystem::path provides the size of the string that is referenced by the c_str() function.

{{{
if (path.size()+1 <= _MAX_PATH)
{
	wcscpy(&legacy[0], path.c_str());
}
else
{
	// buffer would overrun, do something else ...
}
}}}
"	Feature Requests	closed	To Be Determined	filesystem	Boost 1.49.0	Problem	fixed	path size