I wrote a text_encoding library provide generic container and iterator with charset infomation. I have used it for some weeks.Use this library, you may write code like: // convert UCS-2 to UTF-8 utf8_string us = L"some wide character: \xABCD\x1234"; cout << us << endl; string s; // move bytes to another std::string. us.swap(s); Or, use iterators: wstring ws = L"some wide character: \xABCD\x1234"; copy ( make_encoded_range<charset::utf8>(ws).begin(), make_encoded_range<charset::utf8>(ws).end(), ostreambuf_iterator<char>(std::cout) ); The version I upload to vault already have a little of tests, examples, and documents. directory url: http://boost-consulting.com/vault/index.php?direction=0&order=&directory=Strings%20-%20Text%20Processing& file name: text_encoding.zip