I have to parse a leading timestamp in a bunch of records, and I would like to avoid having to copy each record into a stringstream just to parser the timestamp. Does anyone know how to call the date_time time_input_facet directly? I did something like the following: char buffer[N]; typedef boost::date_time::time_input_facet TimeFacet; TimeFacet *f = new TimeFacet; boost::posix_time::ptime t; f->get(buffer, buffer + size, ???, t); But I don't know what to pass for the 3rd arg, which is an ios_base &. I tried an ios instance and a stringstream instance, but I couldn't get anything to work - the compiler can't seem to match the call. -- Jeffery Cavallaro, MTV-45-208G Infrastructure Engineering Google Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043 650-214-2552