Question

I need to generate random names which I’ll be using to create temporary files in a directory. Currently I am using C standard function tempnam() for this. My code is in C++ and would like to use C++ equivalent for doing the same task. The code needs to work on Solaris as well as on Windows.

Is anyone aware of such thing in C++? Any pointer on this would be highly appreciated.

Answer 1

Try std::tempnam in the cstdio header. 😉

The C standard library is still available in C++ code. For convenience, they provide C++ wrappers (in headers with the ‘c’ prefix, and no extension), and available in the std namespace.

You can also use the plain C version (stdio.h and tempnam in the global namespace, but you did ask for the C++ version ;))

The C++ standard library only provides new functions when there’s actually room for improvement. It has a string class, because a string class is an improvement over char pointers as C has. It has a vector class, because, well, it’s useful.

For something like tempnam, what would C++ be able to bring to the party, that we didn’t already have from C? So they didn’t do anything about it, other than making the old version available.