Hi, While working on the Boost profile for ODB C++ ORM[1], I was looking for a Boost type to map the database BLOB type to. I hoped to find something that would encapsulate the memory management and provide basic operations like copy (memcpy), append, set all bytes in a buffer to a specific value (memset), etc. Something that I could use like this: class packet { address to_; boost::buffer payload_; public: packet (const address& to, const void* data, std::size_t size) to_ (to), data_ (data, size) { } const boost::buffer& payload () const { return payload_; } }; class socket { public: void send (const packet& p) { ... s_.send (p.payload ().data (), p.payload ().size ()) } }; I found a number of buffer types in asio (asio/buffer.hpp) but they don't do memory management. I also found auto_buffer in implementation details of signal2 (signal2/detail/auto_buffer.hxx) and buffer in implementation details of iostream (iostream/detail/buffer.hxx). But they appear to be purpose-built for the libraries in question. So, unless I missed something obvious, I would like to propose a simple buffer abstraction for inclusion into Boost. Here are some additional motivations: - Seeing that there is a number of library-specific implementations, it is quite clear that such a class is often needed. - If we have a "top-level" buffer class, various i/o libraries could use it in their interfaces which would lead to better library interoperability (i.e., one could receive data from a socket into a buffer using asio and then pass that buffer to iostream or interprocess without any conversions). - A top-level buffer class will be fairly light-weight (perhaps even header-only). Right now, if I am to use a buffer implementation from say, asio, I need to install and potentially link to that library. If the community believes this is a good idea, I will next send the buffer interface for review/discussion. Let me know what you think. [1] http://www.codesynthesis.com/products/odb/ Boris