Question

I have a code that should run on both windows and unix systems (Mac, linux etc.) and I want to access / delete some files in a relative path, is there a way to construct the path in a way that will be compatible for both OSs (like Java’s File.separator)?

The closest thing that I though about is something like that:

#ifdef _WIN32
#define FILE_SEPARATOR   "\\"
#else
#define FILE_SEPARATOR   "/"
#endif

//in windows - ".\\filedir\\filename.txt"
//in *nix - "./filedir/filename.txt"
const char * mypath = "." FILE_SEPARATOR "filedir" FILE_SEPARATOR "filename.txt";

EDIT

After reading the answers / comments below – I would like to add that a confirmation that windows XP or newer compliance with POSIX regarding this is enough for me.

Answer 1

Windows supports a POSIX-compliant path separator.

This means that you can safely use the forward slash / when building your path and consuming Windows API or C IO functions.

However, if your code acts as a library and exposes an API which accepts and returns paths, you may have to posixify input paths and unposixify return paths. This will add a slight burden but will feel more native to your consumers.