I'm reading path names from a database which are stored as relative paths in Windows format, and try to create a boost::filesystem::path from them on a Unix system. What happens is that the constructor call interprets the whole string as the filename. I need the path to be converted to a correct Posix path as it will be used locally. I didn't find any conversion functions in the boost::filesystem reference, nor through google. Am I just blind, is there an obvious solution? If not, how would you do this? Example: std::string win_path("foo\\bar\\asdf.xml"); std::string posix_path("foo/bar/asdf.xml"); // loops just once, as part is the whole win_path interpreted as a filename boost::filesystem::path boost_path(win_path); BOOST_FOREACH(boost::filesystem::path part, boost_path) { std::cout << part << std::endl; } // prints each path component separately boost::filesystem::path boost_path_posix(posix_path); BOOST_FOREACH(boost::filesystem::path part, boost_path_posix) { std::cout << part << std::endl; }