Why Doesn't Dividing a path by the Default Constructed path Just add a Trailing Separator in Visual Studio?

Question

Let's say that filesystem::current_path will return the path:

/tmp/1567519419.773012

But I want a trailing separator. If seems like all I should have to do would be:

filesystem::current_path() / filesystem::path()

This works on gcc giving me:

/tmp/1567519419.773012/

But on visual-studio, while the filesystem::current_path also gives me the absolute path without a trailing seperator, dividing by filesystem::path() has no effect. The resulting path is still the absolute path without a trailing separator.

I'd like code that is cross platform compatible, and I'd like to avoid having to detect whether the current path already has a trailing separator.

Is there anything available to me?

Answer 1

I'm not familiar enough with filesystem to know which compiler is correct (possibly both are, if there is implementation-defined behavior involved). However, the following should work on all platforms that correctly implement filesystem:

#include <iostream>
#include <filesystem>

int main() {
    auto foo = std::filesystem::current_path();
    foo += foo.preferred_separator; // A static data member of std::filesystem::path

    // The lexically normal form eliminates doubled separators
    std::cout << foo.lexically_normal().string() << '\n';
}