[Boost-users] Boost.Filesystem path string() confusion

Hello, I want to use the Boost.Filesystem library in my Win32 application. I've stumbled upon a problem which may very well be my misunderstanding of how to use the library but reading the documentation doesn't clear up my confusion. The user choses a path from a native UI and a bfs::path is constructed with the native name checker. This path needs to be persisted so I call the string() method which according to the documentation "Returns: The contents of m_name, formatted according to the rules of the generic path string grammar." I figured this string would be acceptable to the bfs::path constructor without specifying native because it's in the corrct grammar but I get an exception thrown. Here's a stripped down version of my code: #include <iostream> #include <iterator> #include namespace bfs = boost::filesystem; int main() { try { // Path constructed from a native UI so constructed with native bfs::path myPath("C:/autoexec.bat",bfs::native); // Persist to grammar conformant string std::string persisted = myPath.string(); // Recreate from persisted string - *THROWS EXCEPTION* bfs::path otherPath(persisted); } catch(const std::exception& e) { std::cout << e.what() << std::endl; } return 0; } The exception string is "boost::filesystem::path: invalid name "C:" in path: "C:/autoexec.bat"" Can someone explain how I should be doing this please? Thanks, Pete