PR# 2557 broken features in FILE and FILE_NAME

I am doing a lot of handling of files.
I need to be able to test whether a file name is valid and creatable, before I try to create it.
The following routines were all candidates for my testing, but none of them work well in Windows 2000. I don't know about other platforms.
Here are the features I have problems with:
RAW_FILE.is_creatable
FILE_NAME.is_valid
FILE_NAME.is_file_name_valid

The problem with all of these 3 features is that none of them accurately detects invalid files names in Windows.
This makes it difficult to use DBC and build reliable software that handles files. 

I could not diagnose these any further because they stop at 'c' libraries for which I don't think I have the source code in my package (do I?).

If there is some other class and feature I should be using to test a file name before issuing a create command, then let me know.  That is my ultimate goal with this situation.  I want to create files based on names a user gives me.
I'd like to check the name first to ensure it is valid.

Regardless, I intend to have exception code in any routines that access external resources like files, because external resources are unpredictable.
However, I can build better classes if I can use assertions to check situations where file names are handled. But I can't use those basic assertions if the tests above don't work.

I attached a complete test system that illustrates the failures.
YOu can create a test directory "C:\test" and then compile and run the tests.
If you are in melted mode, you will have to manually force it past the exceptions about 10 times.  There is exception handling in it.

State-Changed-From-To: open-open
State-Changed-By: Patrick
State-Changed-When: Fri Mar  2 15:36:04 PST 2001
State-Changed-Why:

Dear David,

right now, I wanted to look at you problem, but your attached
test suite was no longer available on our server. Could you
please resend it to me?