(Background: I need a string_view with features in N3762 that aren't in N3442 (viz., pos parameters to the string methods). I'm trying to determine how much effort I should put into a set of patches to update the Boost implementation to the latest draft proposal.) The default constructor for Boost.string_ref produces an object which returns a null pointer from data(). N3442 and its successor N3762 both require the return value from data() to be non-null (http://isocpp.org/files/papers/N3762.html#h5o-5). GCC's libstdc++ folks solved this by adding a constexpr unit length string to serve as the base referenced object (http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/libstdc++/2013-11/msg00104.html). But for Boost I don't see how this can be changed without introducing a link dependency. In a cases like this, how closely does Boost want to track the standard proposals? Similarly, the standard proposal has settled on *string_view instead of *string_ref. Would Boost rename the library/class, or just introduce an alias? Peter