Hi, Currently, one has to manually allocate the array and pass the ptr to the constructor of scoped_array / shared_array. boost::scoped_array<unsigned char> A(new unsigned char[100]); boost::shared_array<unsigned char> B(new unsigned char[100]); This requires one to repeat the type and shared_array requires two allocations (one extra for the control block). std::vector has a constructor from size_t and one can write: std::vector<unsigned char> V(100); This avoids the type duplication and it'd allow shared_array to do only a single allocation. A few choices have to be made: 1. Should "new T[sz]" or "new T[sz]()" be used? 2. What should happen when size = 0? Should it call new T[0] or should it just use NULL? https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/4637 -- Olaf