I have a tuple as a member of one of my classes, and it appears, that MSVC 6 requires me to do a using boost::tuple, rather than declaring it with the boost namespace at the var. For this declaration in my header: boost::tuple willis; I get the following error: file.h(161) : error C2059: syntax error : '<' file.h(161) : error C2238: unexpected token(s) preceding ';' If I add the using (which I would prefer not to do), the declaration: tuple willis; works fine. Any suggestions?