I understand how to make option values unicode, but don't know how to make something like generic->add_options() (L"ärrä,ä", L"ä option") ; work correctly. Looking at the headers it looks like this is impossible, because operator() is not a template<charT> class as many others. Another thing: How can I make the default argument not to show in the options_description printing and change the "arg" argument placeholder? Right now ("dir,d", po::value<string>()->default_value("."), "dirDesc") prints out cout << *opts; -> ... -d [--dir] arg(=.) dirDesc ... I would like to just write -d [--dir] path dirDesc The module tutorial tells (Multiple sources example) of the possibility to get --optimization n : optimization level -I [ --include-path ] path : include path where path is written instead of arg, n instead of arg, and the default value 10 is not printed, but compiling the code and testing it gives out --optimization arg (=10) optimization level -I [ --include-path ] arg include path What's wrong? I have boost-1.34.0. niko