Sean Farrow wrote:

Does boost work with std::wstring?

Why not? Boost provides a bunch of function and class templates that work for any character-like type. See e.g. the String-Algo library http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_37_0/doc/html/string_algo.html or the file-system library http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_37_0/libs/filesystem/doc/index.htm

Also is there a way to tell c++ to use std::wstring when instanciating an std::string?

This has nothing to do with C++. std::string is a typedef for std::basic_string<char> and std::wstring is some such for std::basic_string. char and wchar_t are distinct types, so no such instantiation replacement makes sense. You probably come from MFC world with some TCHAR #define. If you prefer this, just define your own tstring like this: typedef std::basic_string<TCHAR> tstring; and you are done (proper include's implied). HTH & Greetings from Bremen, Daniel Krügler