I was just writing up a simple tutorial example; finding the subject in a set of email headers. Here's what I got: std::string line; boost::regex pat("^Subject: (Re: )?(.*)"); boost::smatch matches; while (std::cin) { std::getline(std::cin, line); if (boost::regex_match(line,matches, pat)) std::cout << matches[2]; } 1. There's no way to search a stream for a match because a regex requires bidirectional iterators, so I have to do this totally frustrating line-by-line search. I think Spirit has some kind of iterator that turns an input iterator into something forward by holding a cache of the data starting with the earliest copy of the original iterator. Could something like that be added? 2. Seems to me that if match objects could be converted to bool, we might be able to: std::string line; boost::regex pat("^Subject: (Re: )?(.*)"); while (std::cin) { std::getline(std::cin, line); if (boost::smatch m = boost::regex_match(line, pat)) std::cout << m[2]; } which would be much smoother to the touch. Are match objects expensive to construct? -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com