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

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, and numeric_cast<> to perform safe casting between numeric 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 06 January, 2001