If you provide a long program options description while using boost, you will encounter such issue, if you using debug version, you will see a debug assertion failed alert, if you using release version, your program will be crashed. following codes can be used to reproduce this issue #include <iostream> #include using namespace std; int main(int argc, char* argv[]) { namespace po = boost::program_options; po::options_description desc("supported options"); desc.add_options() ("help,h", "display this help message,this help will be printed out if you not provide option here!"); std::cout << desc << "\n"; } I have trace this issue, it is located in function format_paragraph in the file options_description.cpp, namespace { void format_paragraph(std::ostream& os, std::string par, unsigned first_column_width, unsigned line_length) { ...... // prevent chopped words // if (lastchar != ' ') && // ((exists(lastchar + 1) && (lastchar + 1 != ' ')) if ((*(line_end - 1) != ' ') && ((line_end < par_end) && (*line_end != ' '))) { // find last ' ' in the second half of the current paragraph line string::const_iterator last_space = find(reverse_iteratorstring::const_iterator(line_end - 1), reverse_iteratorstring::const_iterator(line_begin - 1), ' ') .base(); if (last_space != line_begin - 1) { ...... } if option description is long enough, the find function will be called, and "reverse_iteratorstring::const_iterator(line_begin - 1)" will lead to this issue, may "line_begin - 1" access a invalid space. If there have some guys to confirm it was a bug in boost?