I suggested compressed_endian_integer. See my reply in that other part of the thread for subsequent discussion of such names.
I think the "endian" parameter is of secondary importance and should be removed from the name: compressed_integer, packed_int, etc. The type should still have an endianness template paramenter, but it should default to "native". Of my implementation, all that ever actually gets used is int24_t and uint24_t. They are implemented as typedefs of packed_int which is similar to Beman's, something like this. typedef packed_int<3, signed, native> int24_t; typedef packed_int<3, unsigned, native> uint24_t; I don't specify mine in terms of "bits", the "3" represents the number of bytes (which I assume are octets). The "signed" and "unsigned" types are strictly tags and have nothing to do with the actual implementation (other than to indicate sign). If boost::integer is going to be a namespace, then I suppose these belong there. terry