I use filesystem::wifstream. Lately I've found that the cvs fstream.hpp causes a parse error. Here is the result of compiling the single line #include <boost/filesystem/fstream.hpp> g++ -c tfsbug.cpp -I/usr/local/include -isystem /usr/local/include/boost-1_34 -g -Wall -Wno-non-virtual-dtor -Wno-inline -ftemplate-depth-255 -finline-functions -MMD -MF.deps/tfsbug.d /usr/local/include/boost-1_34/boost/filesystem/fstream.hpp: In member function `boost::filesystem::basic_filebuf<charT, traits>* boost::filesystem::basic_filebuf<charT, traits>::open(const boost::filesystem::basic_path<std::wstring, boost::filesystem::wpath_traits>&, std::_Ios_Openmode)': /usr/local/include/boost-1_34/boost/filesystem/fstream.hpp:266: parse error before `>' token The compiler is % g++ -v Reading specs from /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i386-redhat-linux/3.2.2/specs Configured with: ../configure --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man --infodir=/usr/share/info --enable-shared --enable-threads=posix --disable-checking --with-system-zlib --enable-__cxa_atexit --host=i386-redhat-linux Thread model: posix gcc version 3.2.2 20030222 (Red Hat Linux 3.2.2-5)