Boost Libraries

Libraries

Getting Started Tools Web Site News Community FAQ More Info

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.

Libraries Listed Alphabetically

Accumulators - Framework for incremental calculation, and collection of statistical accumulators, from Eric Niebler
Algorithm - A collection of useful generic algorithms, from Marshall Clow
Align - Memory alignment functions, allocators, and traits, from Glen Fernandes
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
Assert - Customizable assert macros, from Peter Dimov
Assign - Filling containers with constant or generated data has never been easier, from Thorsten Ottosen
Atomic - C++11-style atomic<>, from Helge Bahmann, Tim Blechmann and Andrey Semashev
Beast - Portable HTTP, WebSocket, and network operations using only C++11 and Boost.Asio, from Vinnie Falco
Bimap - Bidirectional maps library for C++. With Boost.Bimap you can create associative containers in which both types can be used as key, from Matias Capeletto
Bind - boost::bind is a generalization of the standard functions std::bind1st and std::bind2nd. It supports arbitrary function objects, functions, function pointers, and member function pointers, and is able to bind any argument to a specific value or route input arguments into arbitrary positions, from Peter Dimov
Call Traits - Defines types for passing parameters, from John Maddock, Howard Hinnant, et al
CallableTraits - A spiritual successor to Boost.FunctionTypes, Boost.CallableTraits is a header-only C++11 library for the compile-time inspection and manipulation of all 'callable' types. Additional support for C++17 features, from Barrett Adair
Chrono - Useful time utilities. C++11, from Howard Hinnant, Beman Dawes and Vicente J. Botet Escriba
Circular Buffer - A 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
Compute - Parallel/GPU-computing library, from Kyle Lutz
Concept Check - Tools for generic programming, from Jeremy Siek
Config - Helps Boost library developers adapt to compiler idiosyncrasies; not intended for library users
Container - Standard library containers and extensions, from Ion Gaztañaga
Container Hash - An STL-compatible hash function object that can be extended to hash user defined types, from Daniel James
Context - (C++11) Context switching library, from Oliver Kowalke
Contract - Contract programming for C++. All contract programming features are supported: Subcontracting, class invariants, postconditions (with old and return values), preconditions, customizable actions on assertion failure (e.g., terminate or throw), optional compilation and checking of assertions, etc, from Lorenzo Caminiti
Conversion - Polymorphic casts, from Dave Abrahams and Kevlin Henney
Convert - An extendible and configurable type-conversion framework, from Vladimir Batov
Core - A collection of simple core utilities with minimal dependencies, from Peter Dimov, Glen Fernandes and Andrey Semashev
Coroutine - Coroutine library, from Oliver Kowalke
Coroutine2 - (C++11) Coroutine library, from Oliver Kowalke
CRC - The Boost CRC Library provides two implementations of CRC (cyclic redundancy code) computation objects and two implementations of CRC computation functions. The implementations are template-based, from Daryle Walker
Date Time - A set of date-time libraries based on generic programming concepts, from Jeff Garland
DLL - Library for comfortable work with DLL and DSO, from Antony Polukhin and Renato Tegon Forti
Dynamic Bitset - The dynamic_bitset class represents a set of bits. It provides accesses to the value of individual bits via an operator[] and provides all of the bitwise operators that one can apply to builtin integers, such as operator& and operator<<. The number of bits in the set is specified at runtime via a parameter to the constructor of the dynamic_bitset, from Jeremy Siek and Chuck Allison
Enable If - Selective inclusion of function template overloads, from Jaakko Järvi, Jeremiah Willcock and Andrew Lumsdaine
Endian - Types and conversion functions for correct byte ordering and more regardless of processor endianness, from Beman Dawes
Exception - The Boost Exception library supports transporting of arbitrary data in exception objects, and transporting of exceptions between threads, from Emil Dotchevski
Fiber - (C++11) Userland threads library, from Oliver Kowalke
Filesystem - The Boost Filesystem Library provides portable facilities to query and manipulate paths, files, and directories, from Beman Dawes
Flyweight - Design pattern to manage large quantities of highly redundant objects, from Joaquín M López Muñoz
Foreach - In C++, writing a loop that iterates over a sequence is tedious. We can either use iterators, which requires a considerable amount of boiler-plate, or we can use the std::for_each() algorithm and move our loop body into a predicate, which requires no less boiler-plate and forces us to move our logic far from where it will be used. In contrast, some other languages, like Perl, provide a dedicated "foreach" construct that automates this process. BOOST_FOREACH is just such a construct for C++. It iterates over sequences for us, freeing us from having to deal directly with iterators or write predicates, from Eric Niebler
Format - The format library provides a type-safe mechanism for formatting arguments according to a printf-like format-string, from Samuel Krempp
Function - Function object wrappers for deferred calls or callbacks, from Doug Gregor
Function Types - Boost.FunctionTypes provides functionality to classify, decompose and synthesize function, function pointer, function reference and pointer to member types, from Tobias Schwinger
Functional - The Boost.Function library contains a family of class templates that are function object wrappers, from Mark Rodgers
Functional/Factory - Function object templates for dynamic and static object creation, from Tobias Schwinger
Functional/Forward - Adapters to allow generic function objects to accept arbitrary arguments, from Tobias Schwinger
Functional/Overloaded Function - Overload different functions into a single function object, from Lorenzo Caminiti
Fusion - Library for working with tuples, including various containers, algorithms, etc, from Joel de Guzman, Dan Marsden and Tobias Schwinger
Geometry - The Boost.Geometry library provides geometric algorithms, primitives and spatial index, from Barend Gehrels, Bruno Lalande, Mateusz Loskot, Adam Wulkiewicz and Menelaos Karavelas
GIL - Generic Image Library, from Lubomir Bourdev and Hailin Jin
Graph - The BGL graph interface and graph components are generic, in the same sense as the the Standard Template Library (STL), from Jeremy Siek and a University of Notre Dame team.
GraphParallel - The PBGL graph interface and graph components are generic, in the same sense as the the Standard Template Library (STL), from Jeremy Siek, Doug Gregor, and a University of Notre Dame team.
Hana - A modern C++ metaprogramming library. It provides high level algorithms to manipulate heterogeneous sequences, allows writing type-level computations with a natural syntax, provides tools to introspect user-defined types and much more, from Louis Dionne
Heap - Priority queue data structures, from Tim Blechmann
HOF - Higher-order functions for C++, from Paul Fultz II
ICL - Interval Container Library, interval sets and maps and aggregation of associated values, from Joachim Faulhaber
Identity Type - Wrap types within round parenthesis so they can always be passed as macro parameters, from Lorenzo Caminiti
In Place Factory, Typed In Place Factory - Generic in-place construction of contained objects with a variadic argument-list, from Fernando Cacciola
Integer - The organization of boost integer headers and classes is designed to take advantage of <stdint.h> types from the 1999 C standard without resorting to undefined behavior in terms of the 1998 C++ standard. The header <boost/cstdint.hpp> makes the standard integer types safely available in namespace boost without placing any names in namespace std
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
IO State Savers - The I/O sub-library of Boost helps segregate the large number of Boost headers. This sub-library should contain various items to use with/for the standard I/O library, from Daryle Walker
Iostreams - Boost.IOStreams provides a framework for defining streams, stream buffers and i/o filters, from Jonathan Turkanis
Iterator - The Boost Iterator Library contains two parts. The first is a system of concepts which extend the C++ standard iterator requirements. The second is a framework of components for building iterators based on these extended concepts and includes several useful iterator adaptors, 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 a string, or vice-versa, from Kevlin Henney
Local Function - Program functions locally, within other functions, directly within the scope where they are needed, from Lorenzo Caminiti
Locale - Provide localization and Unicode handling tools for C++, from Artyom Beilis
Lockfree - Lockfree data structures, from Tim Blechmann
Log - Logging library, from Andrey Semashev
Math - Boost.Math includes several contributions in the domain of mathematics: The Greatest Common Divisor and Least Common Multiple library provides run-time and compile-time evaluation of the greatest common divisor (GCD) or least common multiple (LCM) of two integers. The Special Functions library currently provides eight templated special functions, in namespace boost. The Complex Number Inverse Trigonometric Functions are the inverses of trigonometric functions currently present in the C++ standard. Quaternions are a relative of complex numbers often used to parameterise rotations in three dimentional space. Octonions, like quaternions, are a relative of complex numbers, from various
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
Member Function - Generalized binders for function/object/pointers and member functions, from Peter Dimov
Meta State Machine - A very high-performance library for expressive UML2 finite state machines, from Christophe Henry
Metaparse - A library for generating compile time parsers parsing embedded DSL code as part of the C++ compilation process, from Abel Sinkovics
Min-Max - Standard library extensions for simultaneous min/max and min/max element computations, from Hervé Brönnimann
Move - Portable move semantics for C++03 and C++11 compilers, from Ion Gaztañaga
Mp11 - A C++11 metaprogramming library, from Peter Dimov
MPI - Message Passing Interface library, for use in distributed-memory parallel application programming, from Douglas Gregor and Matthias Troyer
MPL - The Boost.MPL library is a general-purpose, high-level C++ template metaprogramming framework of compile-time algorithms, sequences and metafunctions. It provides a conceptual foundation and an extensive set of powerful and coherent tools that make doing explict metaprogramming in C++ as easy and enjoyable as possible within the current language, from Aleksey Gurtovoy
Multi-Array - Boost.MultiArray provides a generic N-dimensional array concept definition and common implementations of that interface, from Ron Garcia
Multi-Index - The Boost Multi-index Containers Library provides a class template named multi_index_container which enables the construction of containers maintaining one or more indices with different sorting and access semantics, from Joaquín M López Muñoz
Multiprecision - Extended precision arithmetic types for floating point, integer andrational arithmetic, from John Maddock and Christopher Kormanyos
Numeric Conversion - Optimized Policy-based Numeric Conversions, from Fernando Cacciola
Odeint - Solving ordinary differential equations, from Karsten Ahnert and Mario Mulansky
Operators - Templates ease arithmetic classes and iterators, from Dave Abrahams and Jeremy Siek
Optional - A value-semantic, type-safe wrapper for representing 'optional' (or 'nullable') objects of a given type. An optional object may or may not contain a value of the underlying type, from Fernando Cacciola
Parameter - Boost.Parameter Library - Write functions that accept arguments by name, from David Abrahams and Daniel Wallin
Phoenix - Define small unnamed function objects at the actual call site, and more, from Joel de Guzman, Dan Marsden, Thomas Heller and John Fletcher
Pointer Container - Containers for storing heap-allocated polymorphic objects to ease OO-programming, from Thorsten Ottosen
PolyCollection - Fast containers of polymorphic objects, from Joaquín M López Muñoz
Polygon - Voronoi diagram construction and booleans/clipping, resizing/offsetting and more for planar polygons with integral coordinates, from Lucanus Simonson and Andrii Sydorchuk
Pool - Memory pool management, from Steve Cleary
Predef - This library defines a set of compiler, architecture, operating system, library, and other version numbers from the information it can gather of C, C++, Objective C, and Objective C++ predefined macros or those defined in generally available headers, from Rene Rivera
Preprocessor - Preprocessor metaprogramming tools including repetition and recursion, from Vesa Karvonen and Paul Mensonides
Process - Library to create processes in a portable way, from Merino Vidal, Ilya Sokolov, Felipe Tanus, Jeff Flinn, Thomas Jarosch, Boris Schaeling and Klemens D. Morgenstern
Program Options - The program_options library allows program developers to obtain program options, that is (name, value) pairs from the user, via conventional methods such as command line and config file, 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 - The Boost Python Library is a framework for interfacing Python and C++. It allows you to quickly and seamlessly expose C++ classes functions and objects to Python, and vice-versa, using no special tools -- just your C++ compiler, from Dave Abrahams
QVM - Boost QVM is a generic library for working with quaternions, vectors and matrices of static size with the emphasis on 2, 3 and 4-dimensional operations needed in graphics, video games and simulation applications, from Emil Dotchevski
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 Niel Groves and Thorsten Ottosen
Ratio - Compile time rational arithmetic. C++11, from Howard Hinnant, Beman Dawes and Vicente J. Botet Escriba
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 - Smart pointer class templates, from Greg Colvin, Beman Dawes, Peter Dimov, Darin Adler and Glen Fernandes
Sort - High-performance templated sort functions, from Steven Ross
Spirit - LL parser framework represents parsers directly as EBNF grammars in inlined C++, from Joel de Guzman, Hartmut Kaiser and Dan Nuffer
Stacktrace - Gather, store, copy and print backtraces, from Antony Polukhin
Statechart - Boost.Statechart - Arbitrarily complex finite state machines can be implemented in easily readable and maintainable C++ code, from Andreas Huber Dönni
Static Assert - Static assertions (compile time assertions), from John Maddock
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 and Raffi Enficiaud
Thread - Portable C++ multi-threading. C++11, C++14, from Anthony Williams and Vicente J. Botet Escriba
ThrowException - A common infrastructure for throwing exceptions from Boost libraries, from Emil Dotchevski
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
Tribool - 3-state boolean type library, from Doug Gregor
TTI - Type Traits Introspection library, from Edward Diener
Tuple - Ease definition of functions returning multiple values, and more, from Jaakko Järvi
Type Erasure - Runtime polymorphism based on concepts, from Steven Watanabe
Type Index - Runtime/Compile time copyable type info, from Antony Polukhin
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 - uBLAS provides matrix and vector classes as well as basic linear algebra routines. Several dense, packed and sparse storage schemes are supported, 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
Uuid - A universally unique identifier, from Andy Tompkins
Value Initialized - Wrapper for uniform-syntax value initialization, based on the original idea of David Abrahams, from Fernando Cacciola
Variant - Safe, generic, stack-based discriminated union container, from Eric Friedman and Itay Maman
VMD - Variadic Macro Data library, from Edward Diener
Wave - The Boost.Wave library is a Standards conformant, and highly configurable 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 which can refer to each other and themselves recursively with the power of context-free grammars, from Eric Niebler

Libraries Listed by Category

Algorithms

Algorithm - A collection of useful generic algorithms, from Marshall Clow
Foreach - In C++, writing a loop that iterates over a sequence is tedious. We can either use iterators, which requires a considerable amount of boiler-plate, or we can use the std::for_each() algorithm and move our loop body into a predicate, which requires no less boiler-plate and forces us to move our logic far from where it will be used. In contrast, some other languages, like Perl, provide a dedicated "foreach" construct that automates this process. BOOST_FOREACH is just such a construct for C++. It iterates over sequences for us, freeing us from having to deal directly with iterators or write predicates, from Eric Niebler
Geometry - The Boost.Geometry library provides geometric algorithms, primitives and spatial index, from Barend Gehrels, Bruno Lalande, Mateusz Loskot, Adam Wulkiewicz and Menelaos Karavelas
GIL - Generic Image Library, from Lubomir Bourdev and Hailin Jin
Graph - The BGL graph interface and graph components are generic, in the same sense as the the Standard Template Library (STL), from Jeremy Siek and a University of Notre Dame team.
GraphParallel - The PBGL graph interface and graph components are generic, in the same sense as the the Standard Template Library (STL), from Jeremy Siek, Doug Gregor, and a University of Notre Dame team.
Min-Max - Standard library extensions for simultaneous min/max and min/max element computations, from Hervé Brönnimann
Polygon - Voronoi diagram construction and booleans/clipping, resizing/offsetting and more for planar polygons with integral coordinates, from Lucanus Simonson and Andrii Sydorchuk
QVM - Boost QVM is a generic library for working with quaternions, vectors and matrices of static size with the emphasis on 2, 3 and 4-dimensional operations needed in graphics, video games and simulation applications, from Emil Dotchevski
Range - A new infrastructure for generic algorithms that builds on top of the new iterator concepts, from Niel Groves and Thorsten Ottosen
Sort - High-performance templated sort functions, from Steven Ross
String Algo - String algorithms library, from Pavol Droba
Utility - Class noncopyable plus checked_delete(), checked_array_delete(), next(), prior() function templates, plus base-from-member idiom, from Dave Abrahams and others

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

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
Atomic - C++11-style atomic<>, from Helge Bahmann, Tim Blechmann and Andrey Semashev
Beast - Portable HTTP, WebSocket, and network operations using only C++11 and Boost.Asio, from Vinnie Falco
Compute - Parallel/GPU-computing library, from Kyle Lutz
Context - (C++11) Context switching library, from Oliver Kowalke
Coroutine - Coroutine library, from Oliver Kowalke
Coroutine2 - (C++11) Coroutine library, from Oliver Kowalke
Fiber - (C++11) Userland threads library, from Oliver Kowalke
Interprocess - Shared memory, memory mapped files, process-shared mutexes, condition variables, containers and allocators, from Ion Gaztañaga
Lockfree - Lockfree data structures, from Tim Blechmann
MPI - Message Passing Interface library, for use in distributed-memory parallel application programming, from Douglas Gregor and Matthias Troyer
Thread - Portable C++ multi-threading. C++11, C++14, from Anthony Williams and Vicente J. Botet Escriba

Containers

Array - STL compliant container wrapper for arrays of constant size, from Nicolai Josuttis
Bimap - Bidirectional maps library for C++. With Boost.Bimap you can create associative containers in which both types can be used as key, from Matias Capeletto
Circular Buffer - A STL compliant container also known as ring or cyclic buffer, from Jan Gaspar
Container - Standard library containers and extensions, from Ion Gaztañaga
Dynamic Bitset - The dynamic_bitset class represents a set of bits. It provides accesses to the value of individual bits via an operator[] and provides all of the bitwise operators that one can apply to builtin integers, such as operator& and operator<<. The number of bits in the set is specified at runtime via a parameter to the constructor of the dynamic_bitset, from Jeremy Siek and Chuck Allison
GIL - Generic Image Library, from Lubomir Bourdev and Hailin Jin
Graph - The BGL graph interface and graph components are generic, in the same sense as the the Standard Template Library (STL), from Jeremy Siek and a University of Notre Dame team.
GraphParallel - The PBGL graph interface and graph components are generic, in the same sense as the the Standard Template Library (STL), from Jeremy Siek, Doug Gregor, and a University of Notre Dame team.
ICL - Interval Container Library, interval sets and maps and aggregation of associated values, from Joachim Faulhaber
Intrusive - Intrusive containers and algorithms, from Ion Gaztañaga
Multi-Array - Boost.MultiArray provides a generic N-dimensional array concept definition and common implementations of that interface, from Ron Garcia
Multi-Index - The Boost Multi-index Containers Library provides a class template named multi_index_container which enables the construction of containers maintaining one or more indices with different sorting and access semantics, from Joaquín M López Muñoz
Pointer Container - Containers for storing heap-allocated polymorphic objects to ease OO-programming, from Thorsten Ottosen
PolyCollection - Fast containers of polymorphic objects, from Joaquín M López Muñoz
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

Correctness and testing

Assert - Customizable assert macros, from Peter Dimov
Concept Check - Tools for generic programming, from Jeremy Siek
Contract - Contract programming for C++. All contract programming features are supported: Subcontracting, class invariants, postconditions (with old and return values), preconditions, customizable actions on assertion failure (e.g., terminate or throw), optional compilation and checking of assertions, etc, from Lorenzo Caminiti
Stacktrace - Gather, store, copy and print backtraces, from Antony Polukhin
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 and Raffi Enficiaud

Data structures

Any - Safe, generic container for single values of different value types, from Kevlin Henney
Bimap - Bidirectional maps library for C++. With Boost.Bimap you can create associative containers in which both types can be used as key, from Matias Capeletto
Compressed Pair - Empty member optimization, from John Maddock, Howard Hinnant, et al
Container - Standard library containers and extensions, from Ion Gaztañaga
Fusion - Library for working with tuples, including various containers, algorithms, etc, from Joel de Guzman, Dan Marsden and Tobias Schwinger
Geometry - The Boost.Geometry library provides geometric algorithms, primitives and spatial index, from Barend Gehrels, Bruno Lalande, Mateusz Loskot, Adam Wulkiewicz and Menelaos Karavelas
Heap - Priority queue data structures, from Tim Blechmann
ICL - Interval Container Library, interval sets and maps and aggregation of associated values, from Joachim Faulhaber
Multi-Index - The Boost Multi-index Containers Library provides a class template named multi_index_container which enables the construction of containers maintaining one or more indices with different sorting and access semantics, from Joaquín M López Muñoz
Optional - A value-semantic, type-safe wrapper for representing 'optional' (or 'nullable') objects of a given type. An optional object may or may not contain a value of the underlying type, from Fernando Cacciola
Pointer Container - Containers for storing heap-allocated polymorphic objects to ease OO-programming, from Thorsten Ottosen
Polygon - Voronoi diagram construction and booleans/clipping, resizing/offsetting and more for planar polygons with integral coordinates, from Lucanus Simonson and Andrii Sydorchuk
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
Type Erasure - Runtime polymorphism based on concepts, from Steven Watanabe
Uuid - A universally unique identifier, from Andy Tompkins
Variant - Safe, generic, stack-based discriminated union container, from Eric Friedman and Itay Maman

Domain Specific

Chrono - Useful time utilities. C++11, from Howard Hinnant, Beman Dawes and Vicente J. Botet Escriba
CRC - The Boost CRC Library provides two implementations of CRC (cyclic redundancy code) computation objects and two implementations of CRC computation functions. The implementations are template-based, from Daryle Walker
Date Time - A set of date-time libraries based on generic programming concepts, from Jeff Garland
Units - Zero-overhead dimensional analysis and unit/quantity manipulation and conversion, from Matthias Schabel and Steven Watanabe
Uuid - A universally unique identifier, from Andy Tompkins

Function objects and higher-order programming

Bind - boost::bind is a generalization of the standard functions std::bind1st and std::bind2nd. It supports arbitrary function objects, functions, function pointers, and member function pointers, and is able to bind any argument to a specific value or route input arguments into arbitrary positions, from Peter Dimov
Container Hash - An STL-compatible hash function object that can be extended to hash user defined types, from Daniel James
Function - Function object wrappers for deferred calls or callbacks, from Doug Gregor
Functional - The Boost.Function library contains a family of class templates that are function object wrappers, from Mark Rodgers
Functional/Factory - Function object templates for dynamic and static object creation, from Tobias Schwinger
Functional/Forward - Adapters to allow generic function objects to accept arbitrary arguments, from Tobias Schwinger
Functional/Overloaded Function - Overload different functions into a single function object, from Lorenzo Caminiti
HOF - Higher-order functions for C++, from Paul Fultz II
Lambda - Define small unnamed function objects at the actual call site, and more, from Jaakko Järvi and Gary Powell
Local Function - Program functions locally, within other functions, directly within the scope where they are needed, from Lorenzo Caminiti
Member Function - Generalized binders for function/object/pointers and member functions, from Peter Dimov
Phoenix - Define small unnamed function objects at the actual call site, and more, from Joel de Guzman, Dan Marsden, Thomas Heller and John Fletcher
Ref - A utility library for passing references to generic functions, from Jaako Järvi, Peter Dimov, Doug Gregor and Dave Abrahams
Result Of - Determines the type of a function call expression
Signals - Managed signals & slots callback implementation, from Doug Gregor
Signals2 - Managed signals & slots callback implementation (thread-safe version 2), from Frank Mori Hess
Utility - Class noncopyable plus checked_delete(), checked_array_delete(), next(), prior() function templates, plus base-from-member idiom, from Dave Abrahams and others

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 - Boost.FunctionTypes provides functionality to classify, decompose and synthesize function, function pointer, function reference and pointer to member 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
QVM - Boost QVM is a generic library for working with quaternions, vectors and matrices of static size with the emphasis on 2, 3 and 4-dimensional operations needed in graphics, video games and simulation applications, from Emil Dotchevski
Static Assert - Static assertions (compile time assertions), from John Maddock
TTI - Type Traits Introspection library, from Edward Diener
Type Traits - Templates for fundamental properties of types, from John Maddock, Steve Cleary, et al

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
Beast - Portable HTTP, WebSocket, and network operations using only C++11 and Boost.Asio, from Vinnie Falco
Endian - Types and conversion functions for correct byte ordering and more regardless of processor endianness, from Beman Dawes
Format - The format library provides a type-safe mechanism for formatting arguments according to a printf-like format-string, from Samuel Krempp
IO State Savers - The I/O sub-library of Boost helps segregate the large number of Boost headers. This sub-library should contain various items to use with/for the standard I/O library, from Daryle Walker
Iostreams - Boost.IOStreams provides a framework for defining streams, stream buffers and i/o filters, from Jonathan Turkanis
Program Options - The program_options library allows program developers to obtain program options, that is (name, value) pairs from the user, via conventional methods such as command line and config file, from Vladimir Prus
Serialization - Serialization for persistence and marshalling, from Robert Ramey

Inter-language support

Python - The Boost Python Library is a framework for interfacing Python and C++. It allows you to quickly and seamlessly expose C++ classes functions and objects to Python, and vice-versa, using no special tools -- just your C++ compiler, from Dave Abrahams

Iterators

GIL - Generic Image Library, from Lubomir Bourdev and Hailin Jin
Graph - The BGL graph interface and graph components are generic, in the same sense as the the Standard Template Library (STL), from Jeremy Siek and a University of Notre Dame team.
GraphParallel - The PBGL graph interface and graph components are generic, in the same sense as the the Standard Template Library (STL), from Jeremy Siek, Doug Gregor, and a University of Notre Dame team.
Iterator - The Boost Iterator Library contains two parts. The first is a system of concepts which extend the C++ standard iterator requirements. The second is a framework of components for building iterators based on these extended concepts and includes several useful iterator adaptors, 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

Language Features Emulation

Exception - The Boost Exception library supports transporting of arbitrary data in exception objects, and transporting of exceptions between threads, from Emil Dotchevski
Foreach - In C++, writing a loop that iterates over a sequence is tedious. We can either use iterators, which requires a considerable amount of boiler-plate, or we can use the std::for_each() algorithm and move our loop body into a predicate, which requires no less boiler-plate and forces us to move our logic far from where it will be used. In contrast, some other languages, like Perl, provide a dedicated "foreach" construct that automates this process. BOOST_FOREACH is just such a construct for C++. It iterates over sequences for us, freeing us from having to deal directly with iterators or write predicates, from Eric Niebler
Move - Portable move semantics for C++03 and C++11 compilers, from Ion Gaztañaga
Parameter - Boost.Parameter Library - Write functions that accept arguments by name, from David Abrahams and Daniel Wallin
Scope Exit - Execute arbitrary code at scope exit, from Alexander Nasonov
Type Index - Runtime/Compile time copyable type info, from Antony Polukhin
Typeof - Typeof operator emulation, from Arkadiy Vertleyb and Peder Holt

Math and numerics

Accumulators - Framework for incremental calculation, and collection of statistical accumulators, from Eric Niebler
Endian - Types and conversion functions for correct byte ordering and more regardless of processor endianness, from Beman Dawes
Geometry - The Boost.Geometry library provides geometric algorithms, primitives and spatial index, from Barend Gehrels, Bruno Lalande, Mateusz Loskot, Adam Wulkiewicz and Menelaos Karavelas
Integer - The organization of boost integer headers and classes is designed to take advantage of <stdint.h> types from the 1999 C standard without resorting to undefined behavior in terms of the 1998 C++ standard. The header <boost/cstdint.hpp> makes the standard integer types safely available in namespace boost without placing any names in namespace std
Interval - Extends the usual arithmetic functions to mathematical intervals, from Guillaume Melquiond, Hervé Brönnimann and Sylvain Pion
Math - Boost.Math includes several contributions in the domain of mathematics: The Greatest Common Divisor and Least Common Multiple library provides run-time and compile-time evaluation of the greatest common divisor (GCD) or least common multiple (LCM) of two integers. The Special Functions library currently provides eight templated special functions, in namespace boost. The Complex Number Inverse Trigonometric Functions are the inverses of trigonometric functions currently present in the C++ standard. Quaternions are a relative of complex numbers often used to parameterise rotations in three dimentional space. Octonions, like quaternions, are a relative of complex numbers, from various
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 - Boost.MultiArray provides a generic N-dimensional array concept definition and common implementations of that interface, from Ron Garcia
Multiprecision - Extended precision arithmetic types for floating point, integer andrational arithmetic, from John Maddock and Christopher Kormanyos
Numeric Conversion - Optimized Policy-based Numeric Conversions, from Fernando Cacciola
Odeint - Solving ordinary differential equations, from Karsten Ahnert and Mario Mulansky
Operators - Templates ease arithmetic classes and iterators, from Dave Abrahams and Jeremy Siek
Polygon - Voronoi diagram construction and booleans/clipping, resizing/offsetting and more for planar polygons with integral coordinates, from Lucanus Simonson and Andrii Sydorchuk
QVM - Boost QVM is a generic library for working with quaternions, vectors and matrices of static size with the emphasis on 2, 3 and 4-dimensional operations needed in graphics, video games and simulation applications, from Emil Dotchevski
Random - A complete system for random number generation, from Jens Maurer
Ratio - Compile time rational arithmetic. C++11, from Howard Hinnant, Beman Dawes and Vicente J. Botet Escriba
Rational - A rational number class, from Paul Moore
uBLAS - uBLAS provides matrix and vector classes as well as basic linear algebra routines. Several dense, packed and sparse storage schemes are supported, from Joerg Walter and Mathias Koch

Memory

Align - Memory alignment functions, allocators, and traits, from Glen Fernandes
Pool - Memory pool management, from Steve Cleary
Smart Ptr - Smart pointer class templates, from Greg Colvin, Beman Dawes, Peter Dimov, Darin Adler and Glen Fernandes
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 and Dan Nuffer

Patterns and Idioms

Compressed Pair - Empty member optimization, from John Maddock, Howard Hinnant, et al
Flyweight - Design pattern to manage large quantities of highly redundant objects, from Joaquín M López Muñoz
Signals - Managed signals & slots callback implementation, from Doug Gregor
Signals2 - Managed signals & slots callback implementation (thread-safe version 2), from Frank Mori Hess
Utility - Class noncopyable plus checked_delete(), checked_array_delete(), next(), prior() function templates, plus base-from-member idiom, from Dave Abrahams and others

Preprocessor Metaprogramming

Identity Type - Wrap types within round parenthesis so they can always be passed as macro parameters, from Lorenzo Caminiti
Preprocessor - Preprocessor metaprogramming tools including repetition and recursion, from Vesa Karvonen and Paul Mensonides
VMD - Variadic Macro Data library, from Edward Diener

Programming Interfaces

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

State Machines

Meta State Machine - A very high-performance library for expressive UML2 finite state machines, from Christophe Henry
Statechart - Boost.Statechart - Arbitrarily complex finite state machines can be implemented in easily readable and maintainable C++ code, from Andreas Huber Dönni

String and text processing

Convert - An extendible and configurable type-conversion framework, from Vladimir Batov
Format - The format library provides a type-safe mechanism for formatting arguments according to a printf-like format-string, from Samuel Krempp
Iostreams - Boost.IOStreams provides a framework for defining streams, stream buffers and i/o filters, from Jonathan Turkanis
Lexical Cast - General literal text conversions, such as an int represented a string, or vice-versa, from Kevlin Henney
Locale - Provide localization and Unicode handling tools for C++, from Artyom Beilis
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 and Dan Nuffer
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 - The Boost.Wave library is a Standards conformant, and highly configurable 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 which can refer to each other and themselves recursively with the power of context-free grammars, from Eric Niebler

System

Chrono - Useful time utilities. C++11, from Howard Hinnant, Beman Dawes and Vicente J. Botet Escriba
Context - (C++11) Context switching library, from Oliver Kowalke
Date Time - A set of date-time libraries based on generic programming concepts, from Jeff Garland
DLL - Library for comfortable work with DLL and DSO, from Antony Polukhin and Renato Tegon Forti
Fiber - (C++11) Userland threads library, from Oliver Kowalke
Filesystem - The Boost Filesystem Library provides portable facilities to query and manipulate paths, files, and directories, from Beman Dawes
Process - Library to create processes in a portable way, from Merino Vidal, Ilya Sokolov, Felipe Tanus, Jeff Flinn, Thomas Jarosch, Boris Schaeling and Klemens D. Morgenstern
Stacktrace - Gather, store, copy and print backtraces, from Antony Polukhin
System - Operating system support, including the diagnostics support that will be part of the C++0x standard library, from Beman Dawes
Thread - Portable C++ multi-threading. C++11, C++14, from Anthony Williams and Vicente J. Botet Escriba

Template Metaprogramming

CallableTraits - A spiritual successor to Boost.FunctionTypes, Boost.CallableTraits is a header-only C++11 library for the compile-time inspection and manipulation of all 'callable' types. Additional support for C++17 features, from Barrett Adair
Function Types - Boost.FunctionTypes provides functionality to classify, decompose and synthesize function, function pointer, function reference and pointer to member types, from Tobias Schwinger
Fusion - Library for working with tuples, including various containers, algorithms, etc, from Joel de Guzman, Dan Marsden and Tobias Schwinger
Hana - A modern C++ metaprogramming library. It provides high level algorithms to manipulate heterogeneous sequences, allows writing type-level computations with a natural syntax, provides tools to introspect user-defined types and much more, from Louis Dionne
HOF - Higher-order functions for C++, from Paul Fultz II
Metaparse - A library for generating compile time parsers parsing embedded DSL code as part of the C++ compilation process, from Abel Sinkovics
Mp11 - A C++11 metaprogramming library, from Peter Dimov
MPL - The Boost.MPL library is a general-purpose, high-level C++ template metaprogramming framework of compile-time algorithms, sequences and metafunctions. It provides a conceptual foundation and an extensive set of powerful and coherent tools that make doing explict metaprogramming in C++ as easy and enjoyable as possible within the current language, 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
TTI - Type Traits Introspection library, from Edward Diener
Type Traits - Templates for fundamental properties of types, from John Maddock, Steve Cleary, et al

Miscellaneous

Conversion - Polymorphic casts, from Dave Abrahams and Kevlin Henney
Convert - An extendible and configurable type-conversion framework, from Vladimir Batov
Core - A collection of simple core utilities with minimal dependencies, from Peter Dimov, Glen Fernandes and Andrey Semashev
Endian - Types and conversion functions for correct byte ordering and more regardless of processor endianness, from Beman Dawes
Lexical Cast - General literal text conversions, such as an int represented a string, or vice-versa, from Kevlin Henney
Log - Logging library, from Andrey Semashev
Numeric Conversion - Optimized Policy-based Numeric Conversions, from Fernando Cacciola
Predef - This library defines a set of compiler, architecture, operating system, library, and other version numbers from the information it can gather of C, C++, Objective C, and Objective C++ predefined macros or those defined in generally available headers, from Rene Rivera
Program Options - The program_options library allows program developers to obtain program options, that is (name, value) pairs from the user, via conventional methods such as command line and config file, from Vladimir Prus
Swap - Enhanced generic swap function, from Joseph Gauterin
ThrowException - A common infrastructure for throwing exceptions from Boost libraries, from Emil Dotchevski
Timer - Event timer, progress timer, and progress display classes, from Beman Dawes
Tribool - 3-state boolean type library, from Doug Gregor
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, based on the original idea of David Abrahams, from Fernando Cacciola

[Category suggestions from Aleksey Gurtovoy, Beman Dawes and Vicente J. Botet Escribá]

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 19 Feb 2015

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