Filesystem Library Design

Introduction
Requirements
Realities
Rationale
Abandoned_Designs
References

Introduction

The primary motivation for beginning work on the Filesystem Library was frustration with Boost administrative tools.  Scripts were written in Python, Perl, Bash, and Windows command languages.  There was no single scripting language familiar and acceptable to all Boost administrators. Yet they were all skilled C++ programmers - why couldn't C++ be used as the scripting language?

The key feature C++ lacked for script-like applications was the ability to perform portable filesystem operations on directories and their contents. The Filesystem Library was developed to fill that void.

The intent is not to compete with traditional scripting languages, but to provide a solution for situations where C++ is already the language of choice..

Requirements

• Be able to write portable script-style filesystem operations in modern C++.
  
  Rationale: This is a common programming need. It is both an embarrassment and a hardship that this is not possible with either the current C++ or Boost libraries.  The need is particularly acute when C++ is the only toolset allowed in the tool chain.  File system operations are provided by many languages used on multiple platforms, such as Perl and Python, as well as by many platform specific scripting languages. All operating systems provide some form of API for filesystem operations, and the POSIX bindings are increasingly available even on operating systems not normally associated with POSIX, such as the Mac, z/OS, or OS/390.
   
• Work within the realities described below.
  
  Rationale: This isn't a research project. The need is for something that works on today's platforms, including some of the embedded operating systems with limited file systems. Because of the emphasis on portability, such a library would be much more useful if standardized. That means being able to work with a much wider range of platforms that just Unix or Windows and their clones.
   
• Avoid dangerous programming practices. Particularly, all-too-easy-to-ignore error notifications and use of global variables. If a dangerous feature is provided, identify it as such.
  
  Rationale: Normally this would be covered by "the usual Boost requirements...", but it is mentioned explicitly because the equivalent native platform and scripting language interfaces often depend on all-too-easy-to-ignore error notifications and global variables like "current working directory".
   
• Structure the library so that it is still useful even if some functionality does not map well onto a given platform or directory tree. Particularly, much useful functionality should be portable even to flat (non-hierarchical) filesystems.
  
  Rationale: Much functionality which does not require a hierarchical directory structure is still useful on flat-structure filesystems.  There are many systems, particularly embedded systems, where even very limited functionality is still useful.

• Interface smoothly with current C++ Standard Library input/output facilities.  For example, paths should be easy to use in std::basic_fstream constructors.
  
  Rationale: One of the most common uses of file system functionality is to manipulate paths for eventual use in input/output operations.  Thus the need to interface smoothly with standard library I/O.
   
• Suitable for eventual standardization. The implication of this requirement is that the interface be close to minimal, and that great care be take regarding portability.
  
  Rationale: The lack of file system operations is a serious hole in the current standard, with no other known candidates to fill that hole. Libraries with elaborate interfaces and difficult to port specifications are much less likely to be accepted for standardization.
   
• The usual Boost requirements and guidelines apply.
   
• Encourage, but do not require, portability in path names.
  
  Rationale: For paths which originate from user input it is unreasonable to require portable path syntax.
   
• Avoid giving the illusion of portability where portability in fact does not exist.
  
  Rationale: Leaving important behavior unspecified or "implementation defined" does a great disservice to programmers using a library because it makes it appear that code relying on the behavior is portable, when in fact there is nothing portable about it. The only case where such under-specification is acceptable is when both users and implementors know from other sources exactly what behavior is required, yet for some reason it isn't possible to specify it exactly.

Realities

• Some operating systems have a single directory tree root, others have multiple roots.
   
• Some file systems provide both a long and short form of filenames.
   
• Some file systems have different syntax for file paths and directory paths.
   
• Some file systems have different rules for valid file names and valid directory names.
   
• Some file systems (ISO-9660, level 1, for example) use very restricted (so-called 8.3) file names.
   
• Some operating systems allow file systems with different characteristics to be "mounted" within a directory tree.  Thus a ISO-9660 or Windows file system may end up as a sub-tree of a POSIX directory tree.
   
• Wide-character versions of directory and file operations are available on some operating systems, and not available on others.
   
• There is no law that says directory hierarchies have to be specified in terms of left-to-right decent from the root.
   
• Some file systems have a concept of file "version number" or "generation number".  Some don't.
   
• Not all operating systems use single character separators in path names.  Some use paired notations. A typical fully-specified OpenVMS filename might look something like this:
  
     DISK$SCRATCH:[GEORGE.PROJECT1.DAT]BIG_DATA_FILE.NTP;5

  The general OpenVMS format is:
  
       Device:[directories.dot.separated]filename.extension;version_number
   
• For common file systems, determining if two descriptors are for same entity is extremely difficult or impossible.  For example, the concept of equality can be different for each portion of a path - some portions may be case or locale sensitive, others not. Case sensitivity is a property of the pathname itself, and not the platform. Determining collating sequence is even worse.
   
• Race-conditions may occur. Directory trees, directories, files, and file attributes are in effect shared between all threads, processes, and computers which have access to the filesystem.  That may well include computers on the other side of the world or in orbit around the world. This implies that file system operations may fail in unexpected ways. For example:
  
       assert( exists("foo") == exists("foo") ); // may fail!
     assert( is_directory("foo") == is_directory("foo"); // may fail!

  In the first example, the file may have been deleted between calls to exists().  In the second example, the file may have been deleted and then replaced by a directory of the same name between the calls to is_directory().
   
• Even though an application may be portable, it still will have to traffic in system specific paths occasionally; user provided input is a common example.
   
• Symbolic links cause canonical and normal form of some paths to represent different files or directories. For example, given the directory hierarchy /a/b/c, with a symbolic link in /a named x  pointing to b/c, then under POSIX Pathname Resolution rules a path of "/a/x/.." should resolve to "/a/b". If "/a/x/.." were first normalized to "/a", it would resolve incorrectly. (Case supplied by Walter Landry.)

Rationale

The Requirements and Realities above drove much of the C++ interface design.  In particular, the desire to make script-like code straightforward caused a great deal of effort to go into ensuring that apparently simple expressions like exists( "foo" ) work as expected.

See the FAQ for the rationale behind many detailed design decisions.

Several key insights went into the path class design:

• Decoupling of the input formats, internal conceptual (vector<string> or other sequence) model, and output formats.
• Providing two input formats (generic and O/S specific) broke a major design deadlock.
• Providing several output formats solved another set of previously intractable problems.
• Several non-obvious functions (particularly decomposition and composition) are required to support portable code. (Peter Dimov, Thomas Witt, Glen Knowles, others.)

Error checking was a particularly difficult area. One key insight was that with file and directory names, portability isn't a universal truth.  Rather, the programmer must think out the question "What operating systems do I want this path to be portable to?"  By providing support for several answers to that question, the Filesystem Library alerts programmers of the need to ask it in the first place.

Abandoned Designs

operations.hpp

Dietmar Kühl's original dir_it design and implementation supported wide-character file and directory names. It was abandoned after extensive discussions among Library Working Group members failed to identify portable semantics for wide-character names on systems not providing native support. See FAQ.

Previous iterations of the interface design used explicitly named functions providing a large number of convenience operations, with no compile-time or run-time options. There were so many function names that they were very confusing to use, and the interface was much larger. Any benefits seemed theoretical rather than real.

Designs based on compile time (rather than runtime) flag and option selection (via policy, enum, or int template parameters) became so complicated that they were abandoned, often after investing quite a bit of time and effort. The need to qualify attribute or option names with namespaces, even aliases, made use in template parameters ugly; that wasn't fully appreciated until actually writing real code.

Yet another set of convenience functions ( for example, remove with permissive, prune, recurse, and other options, plus predicate, and possibly other, filtering features) were abandoned because the details became both complex and contentious.

What is left is a toolkit of low-level operations from which the user can create more complex convenience operations, plus a very small number of convenience functions which were found to be useful enough to justify inclusion.

path.hpp

There were so many abandoned path designs, I've lost track. Policy-based class templates in several flavors, constructor supplied runtime policies, operation specific runtime policies, they were all considered, often implemented, and ultimately abandoned as far too complicated for any small benefits observed.

Additional design considerations apply to Internationalization.

error checking

A number of designs for the error checking machinery were abandoned, some after experiments with implementations. Totally automatic error checking was attempted in particular. But automatic error checking tended to make the overall library design much more complicated.

Some designs associated error checking mechanisms with paths.  Some with operations functions.  A policy-based error checking template design was partially implemented, then abandoned as too complicated for everyday script-like programs.

The final design, which depends partially on explicit error checking function calls,  is much simpler and straightforward, although it does depend to some extent on programmer discipline.  But it should allow programmers who are concerned about portability to be reasonably sure that their programs will work correctly on their choice of target systems.

References

Revised 26 December, 2014

© Copyright Beman Dawes, 2002

Use, modification, and distribution are subject to the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt)