As context I would like to say that read "The C++ Programming Language" first edition and thought, "That sounds interesting." and then didn't think of it again 'til about a a couple of months ago, when I read Accelerated C++ on the recommendation of a friend and then updated my original copy to the third edition. So I have NO useful C++ experience, please point out even the most obvious things, I really could be that dumb. I have started a non trivial project that I hope will cement some of the things I've read. And that's where boost comes in. I had some success with using boost_filesystem, so I think I am able to extract basic usage out of the documentation but I've failed to find what I'm looking for in program_options. I would really like to parse a line that has the the form: word [options]... nother option-like-non-option-word... so for instance -F after "word" indicates a legitimate value but -F after "nother" shouldn't set or change the value and indeed might not even have a "value" I've been considering producing a class defining operator() to be used as an additional parser that would recognize the second bare word and make all options thereafter into some list for a dummy option, like the file names in the example. However there is mention of allowing multi word options being "not enabled by default" and I thought that the style argument might be the key, but what I've managed to work out from reading a tarball I downloaded of 1_32_0 seems to use style for changing how single words are interpreted. So before I go crazy trying to implement something that sounds easy to say but beyond my ken, is there a method I'm overlooking for terminating the parsing of the command line before the words are all consumed? Thanks for your time, I'll try to be more brief in future. :) -- Blue Skies