Hi everybody, as promised the dynamic_bitset tests are being _slowly_ settled. My apologies for the very "calm" pace but that's all that my spare time allows me. This morning I've fixed an error caused by VC6's Dinkum Lib. Since the library in this case affects the dynamic_bitset behavior I'd like to ask for you opinion. Try the following program, which attempts to read a string from an *empty* file: #include <iostream> #include <ostream> #include <fstream> #include <string> int main() { using namespace std; ofstream of("a_temporary_file"); of.close(); ifstream f("a_temporary_file"); string s = "help"; f >> s; std::cout << "The string is now " << s << '\n'; std::cout << "(length = " << s.length() << ")\n"; } With VC6's library the string is erase()d. That's because the code in the sentry constructor fails to set an error bit in the stream state if the file is empty. With all other libraries at least eofbit is set (according to lib issue 195 failbit should be set too but many implementations deliberately avoid that; see for instance: http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/libstdc++/2000-q1/msg00086.html); thus bool(sentry_object) is false and the string remains untouched. With dynamic_bitset the situation is exactly the same, as the extractor relies on the underlying library to construct a sentry. Now, the question is: do you see any problems in this? Note that it means attempting to extract a dynamic_bitset from an empty file clears the bitset with VC6's Dinkum while leaves it unchanged on (all) other implementations; however the behavior is consistent with extractions of other types (std::strings) on each platform. Fixing the behavior at the dynamic_bitset extractor level to make it consistent across different standard libraries would be, I think, quite tricky (and ugly). Secondly, a help request. There are some MW errors which I won't be able to fix, as I don't have access to that compiler: http://boost.sourceforge.net/regression-logs/cs-win32_metacomm/output/bin-bo... If anyone wants to submit a patch I'd be more than happy to integrate it. Thanks, Genny.