I wrote an iterator to do recursive directory iteration. The heart of it is: template< typename Predicate > class recursive_directory_iterator : public boost::iterator_adaptor< boost::shared_ptr< detail::rdi_imp< Predicate > >, detail::rdi_policies, const boost::filesystem::path, const boost::filesystem::path &, const boost::filesystem::path *, std::input_iterator_tag, std::ptrdiff_t > { ... }; Works fine as long as you stay away from operator->. For example, fs::recursive_directory_iterator<pred_type> rdi( dir , dummy ); fs::recursive_directory_iterator<pred_type> rdi_end; for ( ; rdi != rdi_end; ++rdi ) { // std::cout << rdi->generic_path() << std::endl; std::cout << (*rdi).generic_path() << std::endl; } works as expected. But if you uncomment the commented line, the program fails in the call to operator->. What "fails" means depends on the execution environment; whatever is happening seems to confuse the debugger, stepping doesn't shed much light on the problem. Same symptoms with both VC++7 and Intel 6.0. I suppose I'm doing something stupid, but don't have a clue as to what. I notice in iterator_adaptor_test.cpp that operator-> is not actually exercised. Is it possible there is a bug in it for input iterators? I've not had similar problems with iterator_adaptor for bidirectional iterators. Any help appreciated, --Beman