Thanks a lot for lexical_cast it is a very useful function. Currenlty I face a problem with it and I think it would be useful addon ;) Unfortunately it can not be used (or I was unable to figure out how) to cast hex or octal numbers from strings to numeric. If it is not possible, are there some concerns which disallow this? the expression: lexical_cast<size_t>("0x015e") throws a bad_lexical_cast With Kind Regards, Ovanes