boost::exists for symlinks do not dereference - c++

Question

In boost::filesystem, the path class always tries to dereference symlinks. A lot of the API is catered towards trying to make symlinks seem invisible. I'm guessing a lot of their syscalls underneath are stat related instead of lstat related. This is problematic for me, as I'm trying to get the symlink itself.
For example, doing fs::exists("some_symlink") because, although some_symlink exists, its referent does not exist. I want this to give me back true, and in the older versions of boost it supports it: https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_32_0/libs/filesystem/doc/operations.htm#symbolic_link_exists
However, now it doesnt. Is there any good way of doing this?

Answer 1

You can use boost::filesystem::symlink_status to get a file_status, and then check its type().
#include <boost/filesystem.hpp>
#include <iostream>
#include <iomanip>
int main(){
auto a = boost::filesystem::symlink_status("a_symlink");
auto b = boost::filesystem::symlink_status("main.cpp");
auto c = boost::filesystem::symlink_status("not_existing");
auto d = boost::filesystem::symlink_status("a_broken_symlink");
std::cout << std::boolalpha
<< (a.type() == boost::filesystem::file_not_found) << " "
<< (b.type() == boost::filesystem::file_not_found) << " "
<< (c.type() == boost::filesystem::file_not_found) << " "
<< (d.type() == boost::filesystem::file_not_found) << "\n";
}
Execution:
$ touch f
$ ln -s main.cpp a_symlink
$ ln -s f a_broken_symlink
$ rm f
$ ls -l
total 4
lrwxrwxrwx 1 2001 2000 1 Jun 3 23:33 a_broken_symlink -> f
lrwxrwxrwx 1 2001 2000 8 Jun 3 23:33 a_symlink -> main.cpp
-rw-rw-rw- 1 2001 2000 637 Jun 3 23:33 main.cpp
$ g++ -std=c++14 -Wall -Wextra -pedantic -lboost_filesystem -lboost_system main.cpp && ./a.out
false false true false
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