If you want to do casting without locale context (which is desirable)
std::ostringstream ss; ss.imbue(std::locale::classic()); // C locale ss << 65535; return ss.str();
Thanks! So std::locale::classic effectively means 'turn locale awareness off'?
It installs default so called "C" or "POSIX" locale that is what you need.
Unfortunately this problem is very common and causes many bugs, especially in C with setlocale and printf.
I can imagine! It's so subtle and unexpected. In fact, I used lexical_cast precisely because I thought it wouldn't do anything funky with the conversion.
It is not about lexical cast only it is about anything that uses iostream and *printf/*scanf/ato* and many other library functions. I recently seen how C (and C++) SQL libraries being broken because of global locale.
At least that's how I interpreted the documentation: "For more involved conversions, such as where precision or formatting need tighter control than is offered by the default behavior of lexical_cast, the conventional stringstream approach is recommended."
The best is unfortunatly is avoid installing std::locale global using standard C++ localization, in fact because of this problem in Boost.Locale the default is to use C locale. i.e. ss << 65536; ss.str() == "65536"; And if you need localized numbers: ss << boost::locale::as::number ss.str() == "65,536" Because too many libraries become broken by this "feature" as std::locale::global(std::locale("de_DE.UTF-8")); std::ostringstream ss; ss << 12345.345; Would create "12.345,345" and printf("%f\n",12345.345); Would generate 12345,345 // <-- note "," and not "." So imagine how many libraries and programs do not work in such setups :-) Artyom