Hello, in Boost.Date_Time there is a function to load the Time Zone Database from a File. The function load_from_file takes a string as parameter which contains a local filename to load the Database from. It is sometimes desirable to load the Database from another source than a local file. To support this i suppose to add a function load and alter the existing load_from_file in the following sense void load( std::istream& ifs ) { string_type in_str; std::string buff; if(!ifs){ throw data_not_accessible(); } std::getline(ifs, buff); // first line is column headings while( std::getline(ifs, buff)) { parse_string(buff); } } void load_from_file(const std::string& pathspec) { std::ifstream ifs(pathspec.c_str()); if(!ifs){ throw data_not_accessible(pathspec); } load( ifs ); } BTW: The documentation local_time.html incorrectly states that load_from_file returns a boolean. Best regards Sönke Schau