I realize that changing boost::bind so by default that placeholders of the form _n needing some sort of namespace in front of it will break plenty of code, so I am not suggesting doing that. What I would like to suggest is a Boost.bind macro, which when used before including <boost/bind>, would put the boost::bind placeholders of the form _n in a boost::placeholders namespace. The reason for this suggestion is so that boost::bind and std::bind can be similar syntactically enough so that one could choose one or the other depending on compiler support. Since in the C++ std the placeholders are in the std::placeholders namespace, having a means to have the boost::bind placeholders in the boost::placeholders namespace would be a means to that end.