How can I know the type of a file using Boost.Filesystem?

Question

I'm using Boost but I cannot find complete (or good) documentation about the filesystem library in the installation directory nor the web. The "-ls" example I found has been quite a helper but it's not enough.

Thanks in advance :)

Answer 1

Here is an example:

#include <iostream>
#include <boost/filesystem.hpp>
#include <string>

using namespace std;

int main() {
    string filename = "hello.txt";

    string extension = boost::filesystem::extension(filename);

    cout << "filename extension: " << extension << endl;

    return 0;    
}

The output is ".txt"

Reminder: Compile with '-lboost_system -lboost_filesystem'

Answer 2

How about:

http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_39_0/libs/filesystem/doc/index.htm

The functions for figuring out the file type (directory, normal file etc.) is found on this subpage: http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_39_0/libs/filesystem/doc/reference.html#file_status

If you are looking for the file extension check out: template <class Path> typename Path::string_type extension(const Path &p); on the page: http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_39_0/libs/filesystem/doc/reference.html#Convenience-functions

Answer 3

Here is an example of how you can fetch extension from files :

std::vector<boost::filesystem::path> GetAllFileExtensions()
{
    std::vector<boost::filesystem::path> fileExtensions;
    boost::filesystem::directory_iterator b(boost::filesystem::current_path()), e;
    for (auto i=b; i!=e; ++i)
    {
        boost::filesystem::path fe = i->path().extension();
        std::cout << fe.string() << std::endl;
        fileExtensions.push_back(fe);
    }

    return fileExtensions;
}

std::vector<boost::filesystem::path> fileExtensions = GetAllFileExtensions();

This example just takes all files and strips extension from them and shows on standard output, you could modify function GetAllFileExtensions to only look at one file