Boost C++ Libraries

...one of the most highly regarded and expertly designed C++ library projects in the world. — Herb Sutter and Andrei Alexandrescu, C++ Coding Standards

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Libraries Listed Alphabetically
Libraries Listed by Category
Libraries Retired from Boost

See Getting Started page to find out how to download, build, and install the libraries.

Documentation for some Boost libraries is available as pdfs. This documentation is available on Sourceforge.

Libraries Listed Alphabetically

accumulators - Framework for incremental calculation, and collection of statistical accumulators, from Eric Niebler.
any - Safe, generic container for single values of different value types, from Kevlin Henney.
array - STL compliant container wrapper for arrays of constant size, from Nicolai Josuttis.
asio - Portable networking and other low-level I/O, including sockets, timers, hostname resolution, socket iostreams, serial ports, file descriptors and Windows HANDLEs, from Chris Kohlhoff.
assign - Filling containers with constant or generated data has never been easier, from Thorsten Ottosen.
bimap - Bidirectional maps, from Matias Capeletto.
bind and mem_fn - Generalized binders for function/object/pointers and member functions, from Peter Dimov.
call_traits - Defines types for passing parameters, from John Maddock, Howard Hinnant, et al.
circular_buffer - STL compliant container also known as ring or cyclic buffer, from Jan Gaspar.
compatibility - Help for non-conforming standard libraries, from Ralf Grosse-Kunstleve and Jens Maurer.
compressed_pair - Empty member optimization, from John Maddock, Howard Hinnant, et al.
concept check - Tools for generic programming, from Jeremy Siek.
config - Helps boost library developers adapt to compiler idiosyncrasies; not intended for library users.
conversion - Polymorphic and lexical casts, from Dave Abrahams and Kevlin Henney.
crc - Cyclic Redundancy Code, from Daryle Walker.
date_time - Date-Time library from Jeff Garland.
dynamic_bitset - A runtime sized version of std::bitset from Jeremy Siek and Chuck Allison.
exception - A library for transporting of arbitrary data in exception objects, and transporting of exceptions between threads (N2179), from Emil Dotchevski.
enable_if - Selective inclusion of function template overloads, from Jaakko Järvi, Jeremiah Willcock, and Andrew Lumsdaine.
filesystem - Portable paths, iteration over directories, and other useful filesystem operations, from Beman Dawes.
flyweight - Design pattern to manage large quantities of highly redundant objects, from Joaquín M López Muñoz.
foreach - BOOST_FOREACH macro for easily iterating over the elements of a sequence, from Eric Niebler.
format - Type-safe 'printf-like' format operations, from Samuel Krempp.
function - Function object wrappers for deferred calls or callbacks, from Doug Gregor.
function_types - Type traits for callable, built-in types, from Tobias Schwinger
functional - Enhanced function object adaptors, from Mark Rodgers.
functional/hash - A TR1 hash function object that can be extended to hash user defined types, from Daniel James.
fusion - Library for working with tuples, including various containers, algorithms, etc. From Joel de Guzman, Dan Marsden and Tobias Schwinger.
gil - Generic Image Library, from Lubomir Bourdev and Hailin Jin.
graph - Generic graph components and algorithms, from Jeremy Siek and a University of Notre Dame team; now maintained by Andrew Sutton and Jeremiah Willcock.
integer - Headers to ease dealing with integral types.
interprocess - Shared memory, memory mapped files, process-shared mutexes, condition variables, containers and allocators, from Ion Gaztañaga
interval - Extends the usual arithmetic functions to mathematical intervals, from Guillaume Melquiond, Hervé Brönnimann and Sylvain Pion.
intrusive - Intrusive containers and algorithms, from Ion Gaztañaga
in_place_factory, typed_in_place_factory- Generic in-place construction of contained objects with a variadic argument-list, from Fernando Cacciola.
io state savers - Save I/O state to prevent jumbled data, from Daryle Walker.
iostreams - Framework for defining streams, stream buffers and i/o filters, from Jonathan Turkanis.
iterators - Iterator construction framework, adaptors, concepts, and more, from Dave Abrahams, Jeremy Siek, and Thomas Witt.
lambda - Define small unnamed function objects at the actual call site, and more, from Jaakko Järvi and Gary Powell.
lexical_cast - General literal text conversions, such as an int represented as a string, or vice-versa, from Kevlin Henney.
math - Several contributions in the domain of mathematics, from various authors.
math/complex number algorithms - These complex number algorithms are the inverses of trigonometric functions currently present in the C++ standard, from John Maddock.
math/common_factor - Greatest common divisor and least common multiple, from Daryle Walker.
math/octonion - Octonions, from Hubert Holin.
math/quaternion - Quaternions, from Hubert Holin.
math/special_functions - A wide selection of mathematical special functions from John Maddock, Paul Bristow, Hubert Holin and Xiaogang Zhang.
math/statistical distributions - A wide selection of univariate statistical distributions and functions that operate on them from John Maddock and Paul Bristow
minmax - standard library extensions for simultaneous min/max and min/max element computations, from Hervé Brönnimann.
MPI - Message Passing Interface library, for use in distributed-memory parallel application programming, from Douglas Gregor and Matthias Troyer.
mpl - Template metaprogramming framework of compile-time algorithms, sequences and metafunction classes, from Aleksey Gurtovoy.
multi_array - Multidimensional containers and adaptors for arrays of contiguous data, from Ron Garcia.
multi_index - Containers with multiple STL-compatible access interfaces, from Joaquín M López Muñoz.
numeric/conversion - Optimized Policy-based Numeric Conversions, from Fernando Cacciola.
operators - Templates ease arithmetic classes and iterators, from Dave Abrahams and Jeremy Siek.
optional - Discriminated-union wrapper for optional values, from Fernando Cacciola.
parameter - Write functions that accept arguments by name, by David Abrahams and Daniel Wallin.
pointer container - Containers for storing heap-allocated polymorphic objects to ease OO-programming, from Thorsten Ottosen.
pool - Memory pool management, from Steve Cleary.
preprocessor - Preprocessor metaprogramming tools including repetition and recursion, from Vesa Karvonen and Paul Mensonides.
program_options - Access to configuration data given on command line, in config files and other sources, from Vladimir Prus.
property map - Concepts defining interfaces which map key objects to value objects, from Jeremy Siek.
property tree - A tree data structure especially suited to storing configuration data, from Marcin Kalicinski and Sebastian Redl.
proto - Expression template library and compiler construction toolkit for domain-specific embedded languages, from Eric Niebler.
python - Reflects C++ classes and functions into Python, from Dave Abrahams.
random - A complete system for random number generation, from Jens Maurer.
range - A new infrastructure for generic algorithms that builds on top of the new iterator concepts, from Thorsten Ottosen.
rational - A rational number class, from Paul Moore.
ref - A utility library for passing references to generic functions, from Jaako Järvi, Peter Dimov, Doug Gregor, and Dave Abrahams.
regex - Regular expression library, from John Maddock.
result_of - determines the type of a function call expression.
scope_exit - Execute arbitrary code at scope exit, from Alexander Nasonov.
serialization - Serialization for persistence and marshalling, from Robert Ramey
signals - managed signals & slots callback implementation, from Doug Gregor.
signals2 - managed signals & slots callback implementation (thread-safe version 2), from Frank Mori Hess.
smart_ptr - Six smart pointer class templates, from Greg Colvin, Beman Dawes, Peter Dimov, and Darin Adler.
statechart - Arbitrarily complex finite state machines can be implemented in easily readable and maintainable C++ code, from Andreas Huber.
static_assert - Static assertions (compile time assertions), from John Maddock.
spirit - LL parser framework represents parsers directly as EBNF grammars in inlined C++, from Joel de Guzman, Hartmut Kaiser, Dan Nuffer and team.
string_algo - String algorithms library, from Pavol Droba.
swap - Enhanced generic swap function, from Joseph Gauterin.
system - Operating system support, including the diagnostics support that will be part of the C++0x standard library, from Beman Dawes.
test - Support for simple program testing, full unit testing, and for program execution monitoring, from Gennadiy Rozental.
thread - Portable C++ multi-threading, from William Kempf and Anthony Williams.
timer - Event timer, progress timer, and progress display classes, from Beman Dawes.
tokenizer - Break of a string or other character sequence into a series of tokens, from John Bandela.
TR1 - An implementation of the Technical Report on C++ Library Extensions, using other Boost libraries as a basis, from John Maddock.
tribool - 3-state boolean type library, from Doug Gregor.
tuple - Ease definition of functions returning multiple values, and more, from Jaakko Järvi.
type_traits - Templates for fundamental properties of types, from John Maddock, Steve Cleary, et al.
typeof - Typeof operator emulation, from Arkadiy Vertleyb and Peder Holt.
uBLAS - Basic linear algebra for dense, packed and sparse matrices, from Joerg Walter and Mathias Koch.
units - Zero-overhead dimensional analysis and unit/quantity manipulation and conversion, from Matthias Schabel and Steven Watanabe.
unordered - unordered associative containers, from Daniel James.
utility - Class noncopyable plus checked_delete(), checked_array_delete(), next(), prior() function templates, plus base-from-member idiom, from Dave Abrahams and others.
value_initialized - Wrapper for uniform-syntax value initialization, from Fernando Cacciola, based on the original idea of David Abrahams.
uuid - A universally unique identifier, from Andy Tompkins.
variant - Safe, generic, stack-based discriminated union container, from Eric Friedman and Itay Maman.
wave - Standards conformant implementation of the mandated C99/C++ preprocessor functionality packed behind an easy to use iterator interface, from Hartmut Kaiser
xpressive - Regular expressions that can be written as strings or as expression templates, and that can refer to each other and themselves recursively with the power of context-free grammars, from Eric Niebler.

Libraries Listed by Category

String and text processing

conversion/lexical_cast - lexical_cast class template, from Kevlin Henney.
format - Type-safe 'printf-like' format operations, from Samuel Krempp.
iostreams - Framework for defining streams, stream buffers and i/o filters, from Jonathan Turkanis.
regex - Regular expression library, from John Maddock
spirit - LL parser framework represents parsers directly as EBNF grammars in inlined C++, from Joel de Guzman, Hartmut Kaiser, Dan Nuffer and team.
string_algo - String algorithms library, from Pavol Droba
tokenizer - Break of a string or other character sequence into a series of tokens, from John Bandela
wave - Standards conformant implementation of the mandated C99/C++ preprocessor functionality packed behind an easy to use iterator interface, from Hartmut Kaiser.
xpressive - Regular expressions that can be written as strings or as expression templates, and that can refer to each other and themselves recursively with the power of context-free grammars, from Eric Niebler.

Containers

array - STL compliant container wrapper for arrays of constant size, from Nicolai Josuttis.
bimap - Bidirectional maps, from Matias Capeletto.
circular_buffer - STL compliant container also known as ring or cyclic buffer, from Jan Gaspar.
dynamic_bitset - A runtime sized version of std::bitset from Jeremy Siek and Chuck Allison.
gil - Generic Image Library, from Lubomir Bourdev and Hailin Jin.
graph - Generic graph components and algorithms, from Jeremy Siek and a University of Notre Dame team; now maintained by Andrew Sutton and Jeremiah Willcock.
intrusive - Intrusive containers and algorithms, from Ion Gaztañaga
multi_array - Multidimensional containers and adaptors for arrays of contiguous data, from Ron Garcia.
multi_index - Containers with multiple STL-compatible access interfaces, from Joaquín M López Muñoz.
pointer container - Containers for storing heap-allocated polymorphic objects to ease OO-programming, from Thorsten Ottosen.
property map - Concepts defining interfaces which map key objects to value objects, from Jeremy Siek.
property tree - A tree data structure especially suited to storing configuration data, from Marcin Kalicinski and Sebastian Redl.
unordered - unordered associative containers, from Daniel James.
variant - Safe, generic, stack-based discriminated union container, from Eric Friedman and Itay Maman.

Iterators

gil - Generic Image Library, from Lubomir Bourdev and Hailin Jin.
graph - Generic graph components and algorithms, from Jeremy Siek and a University of Notre Dame team; now maintained by Andrew Sutton and Jeremiah Willcock.
iterators - Iterator construction framework, adaptors, concepts, and more, from Dave Abrahams, Jeremy Siek, and Thomas Witt.
operators - Templates ease arithmetic classes and iterators, from Dave Abrahams and Jeremy Siek.
tokenizer - Break of a string or other character sequence into a series of tokens, from John Bandela.

Algorithms

foreach - BOOST_FOREACH macro for easily iterating over the elements of a sequence, from Eric Niebler.
gil - Generic Image Library, from Lubomir Bourdev and Hailin Jin.
graph - Generic graph components and algorithms, from Jeremy Siek and a University of Notre Dame team; now maintained by Andrew Sutton and Jeremiah Willcock.
minmax - standard library extensions for simultaneous min/max and min/max element computations, from Hervé Brönnimann.
range - A new infrastructure for generic algorithms that builds on top of the new iterator concepts, from Thorsten Ottosen.
string_algo - String algorithms library, from Pavol Droba
utility - Class next(), prior() function templates, from Dave Abrahams and others.

Function objects and higher-order programming

bind and mem_fn - Generalized binders for function/object/pointers and member functions, from Peter Dimov.
function - Function object wrappers for deferred calls or callbacks, from Doug Gregor.
functional - Enhanced function object adaptors, from Mark Rodgers.
functional/hash - A TR1 hash function object that can be extended to hash user defined types, from Daniel James.
lambda - Define small unnamed function objects at the actual call site, and more, from Jaakko Järvi and Gary Powell.
ref - A utility library for passing references to generic functions, from Jaako Järvi, Peter Dimov, Doug Gregor, and Dave Abrahams.
signals - managed signals & slots callback implementation, from Doug Gregor.
signals2 - managed signals & slots callback implementation (thread-safe version 2), from Frank Mori Hess.
result_of - determines the type of a function call expression.

Generic Programming

call_traits - Defines types for passing parameters, from John Maddock, Howard Hinnant, et al.
concept check - Tools for generic programming, from Jeremy Siek.
enable_if - Selective inclusion of function template overloads, from Jaakko Järvi, Jeremiah Willcock, and Andrew Lumsdaine.
function_types - Type traits for callable, built-in types, from Tobias Schwinger
gil - Generic Image Library, from Lubomir Bourdev and Hailin Jin.
in_place_factory, typed_in_place_factory- Generic in-place construction of contained objects with a variadic argument-list, from Fernando Cacciola.
operators - Templates ease arithmetic classes and iterators, from Dave Abrahams and Jeremy Siek.
property map - Concepts defining interfaces which map key objects to value objects, from Jeremy Siek.
static_assert - Static assertions (compile time assertions), from John Maddock.
type_traits - Templates for fundamental properties of types, from John Maddock, Steve Cleary, et al.

Template Metaprogramming

function_types - Type traits for callable, built-in types, from Tobias Schwinger
fusion - Library for working with tuples, including various containers, algorithms, etc. From Joel de Guzman, Dan Marsden and Tobias Schwinger.
mpl - Template metaprogramming framework of compile-time algorithms, sequences and metafunction classes, from Aleksey Gurtovoy.
proto - Expression template library and compiler construction toolkit for domain-specific embedded languages, from Eric Niebler.
static_assert - Static assertions (compile time assertions), from John Maddock.
type_traits - Templates for fundamental properties of types, from John Maddock, Steve Cleary, et al.

Preprocessor Metaprogramming

preprocessor - Preprocessor metaprogramming tools including repetition and recursion, from Vesa Karvonen and Paul Mensonides.

Concurrent Programming

asio - Portable networking and other low-level I/O, including sockets, timers, hostname resolution, socket iostreams, serial ports, file descriptors and Windows HANDLEs, from Chris Kohlhoff.
interprocess - Shared memory, memory mapped files, process-shared mutexes, condition variables, containers and allocators, from Ion Gaztañaga
MPI - Message Passing Interface library, for use in distributed-memory parallel application programming, from Douglas Gregor and Matthias Troyer.
thread - Portable C++ multi-threading, from William Kempf.

Math and numerics

accumulators - Framework for incremental calculation, and collection of statistical accumulators, from Eric Niebler.
integer - Headers to ease dealing with integral types.
interval - Extends the usual arithmetic functions to mathematical intervals, from Guillaume Melquiond, Hervé Brönnimann and Sylvain Pion.
math - Several contributions in the domain of mathematics, from various authors.
math/complex number algorithms - These complex number algorithms are the inverses of trigonometric functions currently present in the C++ standard, from John Maddock.
math/common_factor - Greatest common divisor and least common multiple, from Daryle Walker.
math/octonion - Octonions, from Hubert Holin.
math/quaternion - Quaternions, from Hubert Holin.
math/special_functions - A wide selection of mathematical special functions from John Maddock, Paul Bristow, Hubert Holin and Xiaogang Zhang.
math/statistical distributions - A wide selection of univariate statistical distributions and functions that operate on them from John Maddock and Paul Bristow
multi_array - Multidimensional containers and adaptors for arrays of contiguous data, from Ron Garcia.
numeric/conversion - Optimized Policy-based Numeric Conversions, from Fernando
operators - Templates ease arithmetic classes and iterators, from Dave Abrahams and Jeremy Siek.
random - A complete system for random number generation, from Jens Maurer.
rational - A rational number class, from Paul Moore.
uBLAS - Basic linear algebra for dense, packed and sparse matrices, from Joerg Walter and Mathias Koch.

Correctness and testing

concept check - Tools for generic programming, from Jeremy Siek.
static_assert - Static assertions (compile time assertions), from John Maddock.
test - Support for simple program testing, full unit testing, and for program execution monitoring, from Gennadiy Rozental.

Data structures

any - Safe, generic container for single values of different value types, from Kevlin Henney.
bimap - Bidirectional maps, from Matias Capeletto.
compressed_pair - Empty member optimization, from John Maddock, Howard Hinnant, et al.
fusion - Library for working with tuples, including various containers, algorithms, etc. From Joel de Guzman and Dan Marsden and Tobias Schwinger.
multi_index - Containers with multiple STL-compatible access interfaces, from Joaquín M López Muñoz.
pointer container - Containers for storing heap-allocated polymorphic objects to ease OO-programming, from Thorsten Ottosen.
property tree - A tree data structure especially suited to storing configuration data, from Marcin Kalicinski and Sebastian Redl.
tuple - Ease definition of functions returning multiple values, and more, from Jaakko Järvi.
uuid - A universally unique identifier, from Andy Tompkins.
variant - Safe, generic, stack-based discriminated union container, from Eric Friedman and Itay Maman.

Image processing

gil - Generic Image Library, from Lubomir Bourdev and Hailin Jin.

Input/Output

asio - Portable networking and other low-level I/O, including sockets, timers, hostname resolution, socket iostreams, serial ports, file descriptors and Windows HANDLEs, from Chris Kohlhoff.
assign - Filling containers with constant or generated data has never been easier, from Thorsten Ottosen.
format - Type-safe 'printf-like' format operations, from Samuel Krempp.
io state savers - Save I/O state to prevent jumbled data, from Daryle Walker.
iostreams - Framework for defining streams, stream buffers and i/o filters, from Jonathan Turkanis.
program_options - Access to configuration data given on command line, in config files and other sources, from Vladimir Prus.
serialization - Serialization of arbitrary data for persistence and marshalling, from Robert Ramey

Inter-language support

python - Reflects C++ classes and functions into Python, from Dave Abrahams.

Memory

pool - Memory pool management, from Steve Cleary.
smart_ptr - Six smart pointer class templates, from Greg Colvin, Beman Dawes, Peter Dimov, and Darin Adler.
utility - Class noncopyable plus checked_delete(), checked_array_delete(), next(), prior() function templates, plus base-from-member idiom, from Dave Abrahams and others.

Parsing

spirit - LL parser framework represents parsers directly as EBNF grammars in inlined C++, from Joel de Guzman, Hartmut Kaiser, Dan Nuffer and team.

Programming Interfaces

function - Function object wrappers for deferred calls or callbacks, from Doug Gregor.
parameter - Write functions that accept arguments by name, by David Abrahams and Daniel Wallin.

Miscellaneous

base-from-member - Idiom to initialize a base class with a member, from Daryle Walker.
compressed_pair - Empty member optimization, from John Maddock, Howard Hinnant, et al.
conversion - Polymorphic and lexical casts, from Dave Abrahams and Kevlin Henney.
crc - Cyclic Redundancy Code, from Daryle Walker.
date_time - Date-Time library from Jeff Garland.
exception - A library for transporting of arbitrary data in exception objects, and transporting of exceptions between threads (N2179), from Emil Dotchevski.
filesystem - Portable paths, iteration over directories, and other useful filesystem operations, from Beman Dawes.
flyweight - Design pattern to manage large quantities of highly redundant objects, from Joaquín M López Muñoz.
lexical_cast - General literal text conversions, such as an int represented as a string, or vice-versa, from Kevlin Henney.
numeric/conversion - Optimized Policy-based Numeric Conversions, from Fernando Cacciola.
optional - Discriminated-union wrapper for optional values, from Fernando Cacciola.
program_options - Access to configuration data given on command line, in config files and other sources, from Vladimir Prus.
scope_exit - Execute arbitrary code at scope exit, from Alexander Nasonov.
statechart - Arbitrarily complex finite state machines can be implemented in easily readable and maintainable C++ code, from Andreas Huber.
swap - Enhanced generic swap function, from Joseph Gauterin.
system - Operating system support, including the diagnostics support that will be part of the C++0x standard library, from Beman Dawes.
timer - Event timer, progress timer, and progress display classes, from Beman Dawes.
TR1 - An implementation of the Technical Report on C++ Library Extensions, using other Boost libraries as a basis, from John Maddock.
tribool - 3-state boolean type library, from Doug Gregor.
typeof - Typeof operator emulation, from Arkadiy Vertleyb and Peder Holt.
units - Zero-overhead dimensional analysis and unit/quantity manipulation and conversion, from Matthias Schabel and Steven Watanabe.
utility - Class noncopyable plus checked_delete(), checked_array_delete(), next(), prior() function templates, plus base-from-member idiom, from Dave Abrahams and others.
value_initialized - Wrapper for uniform-syntax value initialization, from Fernando Cacciola, based on the original idea of David Abrahams.

Broken compiler workarounds

compatibility - Help for non-conforming standard libraries, from Ralf Grosse-Kunstleve and Jens Maurer.
config - Helps boost library developers adapt to compiler idiosyncrasies; not intended for library users.

[Category suggestions from Aleksey Gurtovoy and Beman Dawes]

Libraries Retired from Boost

compose - Functional composition adapters for the STL, from Nicolai Josuttis. Removed in Boost version 1.32. Please use Bind or Lambda instead.

Revised 03 Nov 2009

Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See file LICENSE_1_0.txt or www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt)