Appending to boost::filesystem::path

Question

I have a certain boost::filesystem::path in hand and I\'d like to append a string (or path) to it.

boost::filesystem::path p(\"c:\\\\dir\");
p.appen         


        

Answer 1

You can define the + operator yourself such that you can add two boost::filesystem::path variables.

inline boost::filesystem::path operator+(boost::filesystem::path left, boost::filesystem::path right){return boost::filesystem::path(left)+=right;}

Then you can even add a std::string variable (implicit conversion). This is similar to the definition of the operator/ from

include/boost/filesystem/path.hpp:

inline path operator/(const path& lhs, const path& rhs)  { return path(lhs) /= rhs; }

Here is a working example:

main.cpp:

#include 
#include 
#include 

using namespace boost::filesystem;
inline path operator+(path left, path right){return path(left)+=right;}

int main() {
  path p1 = "/base/path";
  path p2 = "/add/this";
  std::string extension=".ext";
  std::cout << p1+p2+extension << '\n';
  return 0;
}

compiled with

g++ main.cpp -lboost_system -lboost_filesystem

produces the output:

$ ./a.out 
"/base/path/add/this.ext"