# Boost Conversion Library

The Conversion Library improves program safety and clarity by performing otherwise messy conversions. It includes cast-style function templates designed to complement the C++ Standard's built-in casts.

To reduce coupling, particularly to standard library IOStreams, the Boost Conversion Library is supplied by several headers:

- The boost/polymorphic_cast.hpp and boost/polymorphic_pointer_cast.hpp headers provide polymorphic_cast<>, polymorphic_downcast<> and polymorphic_pointer_downcast<> to perform safe casting between polymorphic types.
- The boost/implicit_cast.hpp header provides implicit_cast<> to perform implicit casts only (no down-cast, no void*->T*, no U->T if T has only explicit constructors for U).
- The boost/lexical_cast header provides lexical_cast<> general literal text conversions, such as an `int` represented as a `string`, or vice-versa.

Revised June 23, 2005

Copyright 2001 Beman Dawes. Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt)