[boost] Re: Re: Policy or Trait?

There's nothing wrong with that. It is std::basic_string's interface that provides for the use of a policy class. That std::char_traits happens to be the most appropriate -- it rarely isn't -- implementation of that policy is beside the point. You can argue that std::basic_string shouldn't have such a policy parameter, and you'd probably be right, but that's not std::char_traits' fault.

That's right. It's basic_string fault, which should've used char_traits by name in basic_string implementation. The only note to the char_traits design may be that compare method does not nessesary belong to it. Gennadiy.