Hi. Many algorithms in the string-algo library have 3 versions (I'll take to_upper as an example): 1. In-place modification which takes a SequenceT by ref: template<typename MutableCollectionT> void to_upper(MutableCollectionT &); 2. Copy version which takes a SequenceT by const ref, and returns SequenceT: template<typename SequenceT> SequenceT to_upper_copy(const SequenceT &); 3. Copy version which takes a const ref CollectionT and an OutputIteratorT and the OutputIteratorT after using it: template<typename OutputIteratorT, typename CollectionT> OutputIteratorT to_upper_copy(OutputIteratorT, const CollectionT &) I believe there's room for another version - something that takes a const ref CollectionT, and returns a copy in a SequenceT: template<typename SequenceT, typename CollectionT> SequenceT to_upper_copy(const CollectionT &); The benefits are ease of use combined with performance. IMO, a common scenario is to perform a copy algorithm on a char* string, and returning it as a std::string. Such a thing would be easily done with the proposed extension as: std::string str = to_upper_copy<std::string>("something"); As it is now, I either have to make additional copy (if I use the in-place modification version or the SequenceT copy version), or handle the std::string size my self (if I use the OutputIteratorT version). The new version will allow me to do it elegantly and efficiently. The problem is that it probably can't be an overload of to_upper_copy because it has the same number of arguments as one of the existing overloads, so it will have to have a different name :-( Thanks, Yuval