Hi, I tried to save a tree structure out to an archive and then read it back. If I use a text archiver, everything works fine; If I use a binary archiver, an exception of "stream error" is thrown. I managed to shorten my code as following. Can anyone give some advice? I'm using vs2008 and boost 1.42.0. Thanks. /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// #define _SCL_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS #define _CRT_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS #include <fstream> #include #include #include #include #include #include #include #include #include class Base { friend class boost::serialization::access; template<class Archive> void serialize(Archive & ar, const unsigned int version){} public: virtual ~Base(){} }; BOOST_CLASS_EXPORT_GUID(Base, "Base") class Node : public Base { friend class boost::serialization::access; template<class Archive> void serialize(Archive & ar, const unsigned int version) { ar & boost::serialization::base_object<Base>(*this); ar & parent_; ar & firstChild_; ar & nextSibling_; } public: Node* parent_; Node* firstChild_; Node* nextSibling_; Node() { parent_ = NULL; firstChild_ = NULL; nextSibling_ = NULL; } virtual ~Node(){}; bool AddChild_front(Node* node) { node->nextSibling_ = firstChild_; node->parent_ = this; firstChild_ = node; return true; } }; BOOST_CLASS_EXPORT_GUID(Node, "Node") class DeriveNode : public Node { friend class boost::serialization::access; template<class Archive> void serialize(Archive & ar, const unsigned int version) { ar & boost::serialization::base_object<Node>(*this); } }; BOOST_CLASS_EXPORT_GUID(DeriveNode, "DeriveNode") int main() { Node* root = new Node; Node* bodyNode = new Node; root->AddChild_front(bodyNode); Node* headNode = new Node; Node* Eye = new Node; Node* Nose = new Node; Node* Ear = new Node; headNode->AddChild_front( Eye); headNode->AddChild_front( Nose); headNode->AddChild_front( Ear); bodyNode->AddChild_front(headNode); Node* LeftArm = new Node; Node* RightArm = new Node; Node* LeftLeg = new Node; bodyNode->AddChild_front( LeftArm); bodyNode->AddChild_front( RightArm); bodyNode->AddChild_front( LeftLeg); DeriveNode* jointRoot = new DeriveNode; bodyNode->AddChild_front( jointRoot); DeriveNode* jointChild_A = new DeriveNode; jointRoot->AddChild_front( jointChild_A); DeriveNode* jointChild_B = new DeriveNode; jointRoot->AddChild_front( jointChild_B); const Node* rootnode = root ; Node* newroot = NULL; std::ofstream ofs("filename"); { boost::archive::binary_oarchive oa(ofs); oa << rootnode; } ofs.close(); std::ifstream ifs("filename"); { boost::archive::binary_iarchive ia(ifs); ia >> newroot; } ifs.close(); return 0; }