There's a bug report on sourceforge: https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=937606&group_id=7586&atid=107586 which boils down to the fact that directory_iterator it(...); path p = *it++; does not work correctly. The exact problem is that the above line return a copy of the iterator, and increments 'it', but both iterators have shared_ptr to the same internal structure, so by time user deferences the copy, it gets the next file in the directory. The filesystem lib sources contain the following comment: The *r++ requirement doesn't appear to apply to the new single_pass_traversal category Thus I'm leaving the proxy out pending confirmation from the N1477 authors I'm not sure I understand that. It seems that *r++ should work, since signle pass iterator requires that r++ should work and return object of type X (call it r2), and the reabable iterator requires that *r2 should work. Am I wrong? And BTW, don't the above requirements mean r++ cannot return a proxy object, but only a real copy of the iterator? - Volodya