Boost C++ Application Development Cookbook - Second Edition

How it works...

Functions and classes of Boost.Filesystem just wrap around system-specific functions to work with files.

Note the usage of / in step 2. POSIX systems use a slash to specify paths; Windows, by default, uses backslashes. However, Windows understands forward slashes too, so ./ will work on all the popular operating systems, and it means the current directory.

Take a look at step 3, where we are default constructing the boost::filesystem::directory_iterator class. It works just like a std::istream_iterator class, which acts as an end iterator when default constructed.

Step 4 is a tricky one, not because this function is hard to understand, but because lots of conversions are happening. Dereferencing the begin iterator returns ...