I'd like to ask Boosters' opinions on this. boost::iterator_facade determines the iterator_category via the logic outlined in http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_49_0/libs/iterator/doc/iterator_facade.html#... In particular, if (a) CategoryOrTraversal is a Boost traversal tag; and (b) Reference is not a "real" C++ reference (i.e., a proxy reference); then iterator_category is at best convertible to std::input_iterator_tag. This ends up being surprising to users who use boost::iterator_adaptor (note that, by default, iterator_adaptor passes the Boost traversal tag of the adapted iterator down to iterator_facade) to adapt, say, a pointer, define their adapted iterator to return a proxy reference, and find out that their standard library functions don't recognize their adapted iterator as a random access iterator. The usual workaround tends to be to just override the iterator_facade logic yourself to use a more refined iterator_category and hope your standard library functions don't barf. For better or for worse, the present logic in iterator_facade is strictly (more or less) correct given the C++03 iterator requirements, but I just looked up the N3290 draft of C++11 and it appears that any requirements that *i return a real reference have been dropped, thus allowing for proxy references in all iterator categories. (a) Am I interpreting the C++11 iterator requirements correctly? (b) If so, should iterator_facade's iterator-category logic be reworked to account for the new requirements? (c) If so, how should it be determined when to use the C++03 requirements and when to use the C++11 requirements? Thanks, - Jeff