A co-worker of mine who usually programs in C# ran across this bug in the filesystem Two Minute Tutorial located here: http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_38_0/libs/filesystem/doc/index.htm#tutorial #include "boost/filesystem.hpp" // includes all needed Boost.Filesystem declarations #include <iostream> // for std::cout using boost::filesystem; // for ease of tutorial presentation; // a namespace alias is preferred practice in real code Should be: #include "boost/filesystem.hpp" // includes all needed Boost.Filesystem declarations #include <iostream> // for std::cout using namespace boost::filesystem; // for ease of tutorial presentation; // a namespace alias is preferred practice in real code Note the using statement. --Michael Fawcett