Following the guidelines for Boost submission at <url: http://www.boost.org/more/submission_process.htm#interest> this is a request for interest. I've posted the file + one little file it depends on at <url: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/boost/files/named_strings/>. This utility lets you use literal strings in char/wchar_t-templated code (and even as template arguments): you can write things such as BOOST_DEF_NAMED_STRING( eq, "=" ) template< typename Char > bool is_assignment_op( std::basic_string<Char> const& s ) { return s == literal::eq::s<Char>(); }