I would like to have an extension added to Boost.Filesystem, which I have been hand patching along the way. For version 1.41.0, in boost/filesystem/path.hpp, at line 274, add public: typedef boost::BOOST_FILESYSTEM_NAMESPACE::basic_path path_type; What this does is provides access to the path type for a path iterator from just the iterator. I find it very handy when writing generic path handling code. Otherwise you have to hard code for a particular type of path, or pass the type along even though the iterator depends on that type.