Hi I'm trying to use the program_options header to satisfy my command line needs, and I have have run into the following quirk with boost version 1.32 and microsoft visual c++ 7.1 when trying to use 'cout<<' to output the program_options::options_description. Appartently there is a limit to the length of the program option name. When not specifying short optoins names, the option name seems to be limited to 12 characters. greater than this and I get a debug assertion failure in dbgheap.c line 1132 expression: _CrtIsValidHeapPointer(pUserData) . When specifying a short option name, the limit for the full name seems to be 6 characters. More than this results in a debug assertion falure in debug mode (msvc++ 7.1, file dbgdel.cpp, line 52) _BLOCK_TYPE_IS_VALID(pHead->nBlockUse). Is there something I can do to to fix this or work around the problem (besides restricting the length of my option names)? Is this a compiler specific problem? Something wrong with my settings? many thanks, Glen Stark