std::experimental::filesystem::canonical

C++

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Regular expressions library (C++11)

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Technical Specifications

Technical specifications

Filesystem library (filesystem TS)

Library fundamentals (library fundamentals TS)

Library fundamentals 2 (library fundamentals 2 TS)

Extensions for parallelism (parallelism TS)

Extensions for parallelism 2 (parallelism TS v2)

Extensions for concurrency (concurrency TS)

Concepts (concepts TS)

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Special mathematical functions (special math TR)

Filesystem library

Classes
filesystem::path filesystem::filesystem_error filesystem::directory_entry filesystem::directory_iterator filesystem::recursive_directory_iterator filesystem::file_status	filesystem::space_info filesystem::file_type filesystem::perms filesystem::copy_options filesystem::directory_options filesystem::file_time_type
Functions
filesystem::absolute filesystem::system_complete filesystem::canonical filesystem::copy filesystem::copy_file filesystem::copy_symlink filesystem::create_directory filesystem::create_directories filesystem::create_hard_link filesystem::create_symlink filesystem::create_directory_symlink filesystem::current_path filesystem::exists filesystem::equivalent	filesystem::file_size filesystem::hard_link_count filesystem::last_write_time filesystem::permissions filesystem::read_symlink filesystem::remove filesystem::remove_all filesystem::rename filesystem::resize_file filesystem::space filesystem::status filesystem::symlink_status filesystem::temp_directory_path
File types
filesystem::is_block_file filesystem::is_character_file filesystem::is_directory filesystem::is_empty filesystem::status_known	filesystem::is_fifo filesystem::is_other filesystem::is_regular_file filesystem::is_socket filesystem::is_symlink

Defined in header <experimental/filesystem>
path canonical( const path& p, const path& base = current_path() );	(1)	(filesystem TS)
path canonical( const path& p, error_code& ec );	(2)	(filesystem TS)
path canonical( const path& p, const path& base, error_code& ec );	(3)	(filesystem TS)

Converts path p to a canonical absolute path, i.e. an absolute path that has no dot, dot-dot elements or symbolic links.

If p is not an absolute path, the function behaves as if it is first made absolute by absolute(p, base) or absolute(p) for (2)

The path p must exist.

Parameters

p	-	a path which may be absolute or relative to base, and which must be an existing path
base	-	base path to be used in case p is relative
ec	-	error code to store error status to

Return value

An absolute path that resolves to the same file as absolute(p, base) (or absolute(p) for (2)).

Exceptions

The overload that does not take a error_code& parameter throws filesystem_error on underlying OS API errors, constructed with p as the first argument, base as the second argument, and the OS error code as the error code argument. std::bad_alloc may be thrown if memory allocation fails. The overload taking a error_code& parameter sets it to the OS API error code if an OS API call fails, and executes ec.clear() if no errors occur. This overload has

noexcept specification:

noexcept

This function is modeled after the POSIX realpath.

Example

Run this code

#include <iostream>
#include <experimental/filesystem>
namespace fs = std::experimental::filesystem;
int main()
{
    fs::path p = fs::path("..") / ".." / "AppData";
    std::cout << "Current path is " << fs::current_path() << '\n'
              << "Canonical path for " << p << " is " << fs::canonical(p) << '\n';
}

Possible output:

Current path is "C:\Users\abcdef\AppData\Local\Temp"
Canonical path for "..\..\AppData" is "C:\Users\abcdef\AppData"

See also

path	represents a path (class)
absolutesystem_complete	composes an absolute path converts a path to an absolute path replicating OS-specific behavior (function)