Robert, The following demonstrates a problem with serialization of strings conataining '<' and/or '>'. This is on VC7.1 using serialization20 with boost_1_13_0. I'm not in a position to check this on the CVS version at this time. Is this still an issue? Thanks, Jeff ///////////////////////////////////////// #include <boost/archive/xml_oarchive.hpp> #include <boost/archive/xml_iarchive.hpp> #include <string> #include <fstream> int main(int argc, char* argv[]) { std::string lStringOut("<empty>"); { std::ofstream lOut( "C:/xmltest.xml" , std::ios_base::out | std::ios_base::trunc ); if( lOut.good() ) { boost::archive::xml_oarchive oa( lOut ); oa << boost::serialization::make_nvp( "MyString", lStringOut ); } } std::string lStringIn; { std::ifstream lIn( "C:/xmltest.xml" ); if( lIn.good() ) { boost::archive::xml_iarchive ia( lIn ); ia >> boost::serialization::make_nvp( "MyString", lStringIn ); } } assert( lStringOut == lStringIn ); return 0; }