Understanding file utilities

All of the C++ APIs described in this chapter thus far were added prior to C++17. Although C++ provided the ability to read and write a file, it didn't provide all of the other file operations that are needed to manage a filesystem, including file paths, directory management, and so on.

This section will focus on the std::filesystem additions in C++17 that address most of these shortcomings.

Paths

A path is nothing more than a string that represents a node in a filesystem. On UNIX systems, this is usually a string consisting of a series of directory names, /, and a filename, usually with an extension. The purpose of a path is to represent the name and location of a file, which can then be...