Andrew, the following code is not working on my machine. Can you check if it is on your machine, please? The size of the match container is just one. I'm using VC7.1 and Boost 1.33.1. int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[]) { //second approach boost::regex oDateReg2( "\\d{2}-\\d{2}-\\d{4}" ); std::string strDate2( "11-22-1997" ); boost::smatch dateMatch; if( boost::regex_match( strDate2 , dateMatch , oDateReg2 )) { try { size_t nMatchSize = dateMatch.size(); if( nMatchSize >= 4 ) { std::string strMonth = dateMatch[1]; std::string strDay = dateMatch[2]; std::string strYear = dateMatch[3]; unsigned int nYear = boost::lexical_cast<unsigned int>( strYear ); unsigned int nMonth = boost::lexical_cast<unsigned int>( strMonth ); unsigned int nDay = boost::lexical_cast<unsigned int>( strDay ); date d( nYear, nMonth, nDay ); date::ymd_type ymd = d.year_month_day(); } else { std::cerr << "Error. "; } } catch( std::out_of_range oEx ) { std::cout << "Error: " << oEx.what() << std::endl; } catch( std::exception oEx ) { std::cout << "Error: " << oEx.what() << std::endl; } } return 0; } When I run the captures_examples of the regex lib the smatch stuff works. But not here. Very strange. Thanks, Christian