Method for abstracting filesystems in a C program

Question

I'm starting out a program in SDL which obviously needs to load resources for the filesystem. I'd like file calls within the program to be platform-independent. My initial idea is to define a macro (lets call it PTH for path) that is defined in the preprocessor based on system type and and then make file calls in the program using it. For example

SDL_LoadBMP(PTH("data","images","filename"));

would simply translate to something filesystem-relevant.

If macros are the accepted way of doing this, what would such macros look like (how can I check for which system is in use, concatenate strings in the macro?)

If not, what is the accepted way of doing this?

Answer 1

The Boost Filesystem module is probably your best bet. It has override for the "/" operator on paths so you can do stuff like...

ifstream file2( arg_path / "foo" / "bar" );