my suggestion: 1. the lib provides both coroutine<> and generator<> 2. coroutine<> is special routine allowing to enter and leave a function multiple times 3. coroutine<> first template arg defines the signature of the function accepted by coroutine<> 4. coroutine<>::operator() return type is equal to the return type of signature (template arg) 5. function accepted by coroutine<> first arg allows to suspend coroutine<> == jump back to caller of coroutine<>::operator() -> it has to be discussed if this type is of coroutine<> with an 'inverted' signature (as proposed by Giovanni) or not 6. generator<> returns a set of values in a sequence 7. generator<> has only one template arg defining the return type 8. function accepted by generator<> is required to return void 9. generator<>::operator() returns optional< return_type > 10. generator<> is not a range because - 'A Range provides iterators for accessing a half-open range [first,one_past_last) of elements and provides information about the number of elements in the Range.' -> a generator can not determine how many elements it will return - generator<> can only provide a single pass: 'For any Range a, [boost::begin(a),boost::end(a)) is a valid range, that is, boost::end(a) is reachable from boost::begin(a) in a finite number of increments.' -> if the function accepted by generator<> loops for ever it violates the range invariant typedef generator< int > gen_t; void f( gen_t::caller_t & caller) { while ( true) { caller( 7); } } 11. on top of generator<> something like an iterator could be provided: typedef generator< int > gen_t; gen_t gen( f); enumerator< gen_t > i( gen): enumerator< gen_t > e; while ( i != e) { cout << * i++ << "\n"; } Oliver