Hi Neil, I'm sure someone already spoke to you about this, but just in case: Andrei Alexandrescu gave a very interesting presentation at BoostCon that was based on a "ranges only" approach that should eliminate issues like this one: 2: return type specification for find() etc =========================================== There where no major objection to the mechanism, but some found the syntax ugly. I believe the suggested syntax (e.g.) boost::find[_f,_e]( range, x ) boost::find[_f+1,_e]( range, x ) He says he's implemented a superset of the STL algorithms with it so we know the expressive power is fairly complete. I was wondering if you had given any thought to making use of his insights? Especially considering that RangeEx hasn't been used to fully cover a generic domain (I think), it might make sense. -- David Abrahams BoostPro Computing http://boostpro.com