Hi, I am implementing my own read function to populate a property tree: void read_imm(const boost::property_tree::path& path, boost::property_tree::ptree& pt); The first parameter is to specify the root of the configuration tree, from where the property tree will get it's values. However in the implementation of read_imm the path must be parsed and reversed. For that I need to know the separator of the path. Currently, I have the following workaround to get the separator: char getSeparator(const boost::property_tree::path& path) { assert(!path.single()); assert(!path.empty()); std::string pathStr = path.dump(); namespace bpt = boost::property_tree; bpt::path pathCopy(path); std::string first = pathCopy.reduce(); return pathStr.at(first.length()); } This is inconvenient , so this letter is to request a public member function to get the separator to ease the use of boost::property_tree::path. Thanks, Gabor