Acknowledgments

A number of people have made all the difference for this book, and for my ability to write it. First of all, I wish to thank the Boost community for these astonishing libraries. Theythe libraries and the Boostersmake a very real difference for the C++ community and the whole software industry. Then, there are people who have very actively supported this effort of mine, and I wish to thank them personally. It's inevitable that I will fail to mention some: To all of you, please accept my sincere apologies. Beman Dawes, thank you for creating Boost in the first place, and for hooking me up with Addison-Wesley. Bjarne Stroustrup, thank you for providing guidance and pointing out important omissions from the nearly finished manuscript. Robert Stewart, thank you for the careful technical and general editing of this book. Rob has made this book much more consistent, more readable, and more accurateand all of this on his free time! The technical errors that remain are mine, not his. Rob has also been instrumental in finding ways to help the reader stay on track even when the author strays. Chuck Allison, thank you for your continuous encouragement and support for my authoring goals. David Abrahams, thank you for supporting this effort and for helping out with reviewing. Matthew Wilson, thank you for reviewing parts of this book and for being a good friend. Gary Powell, thank you for the excellent reviews and for your outstanding enthusiasm for this endeavor. All of the authors of Boost libraries have created online documentation for them: Without this great source of information, it nearly would have been impossible to write this book. Thanks to all of you. Many Boosters have helped out in different ways, and special thanks go to those who have reviewed various chapters of this book. Without their help, important points would not have been made and errors would have prevailed. Aleksey Gurtovoy, David Brownell, Douglas Gregor, Duane Murphy, Eric Friedman, Eric Niebler, Fernando Cacciola, Frank Griswold, Jaakko Järvi, James Curran, Jeremy Siek, John Maddock, Kevlin Henney, Michiel Salters, Paul Grenyer, Peter Dimov, Ronald Garcia, Phil Boyd, Thorsten Ottosen, Tommy Svensson, and Vladimir Prusthank you all so much!

Special thanks go to Microsoft Corporation and Comeau Computing for providing me with their excellent compilers.

I have also had the pleasure of working with two excellent editors from Addison-Wesley. Deborah Lafferty helped me with all of the initial work, such as creating the proposal for the book, and basically made sure that I came to grips with many of the authoring details that I was previously oblivious to. Peter Gordon, skillfully assisted by Kim Boedigheimer, took over the editing of the book and led it through to publishing. Further assistance was given by Lori Lyons, project editor, and Kelli Brooks, copy editor. I wish to thank them allfor making the book possible and for seeing it through to completion.

Friends and family have supported my obsession with C++ for many years now; thank you so much for being there, always.

And finally, many thanks to my wife Jeanette and our son SimonI am forever grateful for your love and support. I will always do my best to deserve it.