# 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/cast header provides polymorphic_cast<> and polymorphic_downcast<> to perform safe casting between polymorphic types.
- 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