Programming for real-world systems requires interacting with various subsystems of the operating system to utilize their services. Starting with this chapter, we look at the various Boost libraries that provide programmatic access to OS subsystems.

In this chapter, we look at the Boost libraries for performing input and output, and interacting with filesystems. We cover these libraries in the following sections of the chapter:

Using the libraries and techniques covered in this chapter, you will be able to write portable C++ programs that interact with filesystems and perform all kinds of I/O using a standard interface. We do not cover network I/O in this chapter, but devote Chapter 10, Concurrency with Boost, to this topic.