To answer the question in the subject line: char* isn't bool, but it's implicitly convertible to bool, which is probably (haven't really checked, just an educated guess) what's causing you trouble. Nindi wrote:

When I have a Boost.Variant templated on a bool and a std::string, I get the following behaviour ..

#include<string>

#include

typedef boost::variant< bool,std::string> BoostVariant;

int main () {

BoostVariant v("A String");

bool &Bref(boost::get(v)); // this is ok

std::string &Sref(boost::getstd::string&(v)); // But this throws

return 0;

}

Instead of BoostVariant v("A String"); try BoostVariant v(std::string("A String")); I think it will solve your problems.