Boost C++ Libraries

...one of the most highly regarded and expertly designed C++ library projects in the world. — Herb Sutter and Andrei Alexandrescu, C++ Coding Standards

This is the documentation for an old version of Boost. Click here to view this page for the latest version.

Boost Conversion Library

The Conversion Library improves program safety and clarity by performing otherwise messy conversions. It includes cast-style function templates designed to complement the C++ Standard's built-in casts.

To reduce coupling, particularly to standard library IOStreams, the Boost Conversion Library is supplied by several headers:

The boost/cast header provides polymorphic_cast<> and polymorphic_downcast<> to perform safe casting between polymorphic types.
The boost/lexical_cast header provides lexical_cast<> general literal text conversions, such as an int represented as a string, or vice-versa.

Revised June 23, 2005