[Development] The life of a file name and other possibly mal-encoded strings on non-Windows systems

[Marc Mutz]

Hi Julien,

On Tuesday 07 October 2014 14:30:59 Julien Blanc wrote:
> However, i agree that changing this would :
> * break a lot of code

No, it cannot, if, as I propose, it's added to Qt 5.

> * permit only to solve really lower level / corner case issues

The value lies _also_ in being able to iterate over "weird" filenames (where 
weird simply means plugging in a USB stick into an otherwise UTF-8-only 
system).

But the value of a QFilePath class _mainly_ lies in distingiushing strings 
from file paths. Google "Type-Rich Interfaces Bjarne Stroustroup".

> * be redundant with the std::filesystem api when it will be standardized 
> (hopefully for C++17). I hope Qt will then add the relevant overrides to 
> make its use possible anywhere where relevant.

That's another benefit of QFilePath: it's simple to add a QFilePath::
{to,from}StdFileSystem(), and that's all we'll need to do until Qt requires 
C++17.

Thanks,
Marc

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Qt Developer Days 2014 - October 6 - 8 at BCC, Berlin

Marc Mutz <marc.mutz at kdab.com> | Senior Software Engineer
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