I'm using the CVS version of Boost from 2005-06-06, and it seems that text archives don't support anything except strings, characters, and the like, specifically not integer types like int. I've grepped the archive includes, and it seems that there are no save methods specified for the integer types (except char) by the text archives, and I get compiler errors like: c:\D2\API\NewClient\EnhancedMessageHandler.h(370) : error C2679: binary '<<' : no operator found which takes a right-hand operand of type 'int' (or there is no acceptable conversion) (with VC7.1) It works when the RHS of << is a variable, but not when it is a function. I take it that this is because with variables, a string is automatically constructed to wrap the int types. This is very confusing, and might well be worth mentioning in the docs. Marcin Tustin IT Innovation Centre 2 Venture Road Chilworth Science Park Southampton, SO16 7NP, UK tel: +44 23 8076 0834 fax: +44 23 8076 0833 mailto:mt@it-innovation.soton.ac.uk http://www.it-innovation.soton.ac.uk