https://svn.boost.org/trac10/ticket/521 <pre class="wiki">toto_lists@hotbox.ru Last empty token is "compressed" when using regex_token_iterator for splitting strings. BCB 5.64, boost 1.33.0 See the example, compare it with string_algo splitting: #include &lt;boost\regex.hpp&gt; #include &lt;string&gt; #include &lt;vector&gt; #include &lt;iostream&gt; #include &lt;boost/algorithm/string/finder.hpp&gt; #include &lt;boost/algorithm/string/find_iterator.hpp&gt; void with_stringAlgo() { using namespace std; vector&lt;string&gt; result; string to_split("&amp;|&amp;_field2_&amp;|&amp;_field3_&amp;|&amp;"); boost::split_iterator&lt;string::iterator&gt; i(to_split.begin(),to_split.end(),boost::first_finder("&amp;|&amp;")),j; for(;i!=j;++i) { result.push_back(boost::copy_range&lt;std::string&gt;(*i)); } cout&lt;&lt;"size is "&lt;&lt;result.size()&lt;&lt;endl; for(int i=0;i&lt;result.size();++i) cout&lt;&lt;result[i]&lt;&lt;endl; } void with_regex() { using namespace std; using namespace boost; using namespace boost::regex_constants; string s("&amp;|&amp;_field2_&amp;|&amp;_field3_&amp;|&amp;"); boost::regex r("&amp;\\|&amp;");//use &amp;|&amp; as delimiter boost::sregex_token_iterator i(s.begin(),s.end(),r,-1, match_default),j; // vector&lt;string&gt; v; copy(i,j,back_inserter(v)); // cout&lt;&lt;"size is "&lt;&lt;v.end()-v.begin()&lt;&lt;endl; copy(v.begin(),v.end(),ostream_iterator&lt;string&gt;(cout,"\n")); } int main() { with_stringAlgo(); with_regex(); } </pre> en-us /htdocs/site/boost.png https://svn.boost.org/trac10/ticket/521 Trac 1.4.3 John Maddock Wed, 23 Nov 2005 10:47:22 GMT https://svn.boost.org/trac10/ticket/521#comment:1 https://svn.boost.org/trac10/ticket/521#comment:1 <ul> <li><strong>status</strong> <span class="trac-field-old">assigned</span> → <span class="trac-field-new">closed</span> </li> </ul> <pre class="wiki">Logged In: YES user_id=14804 It's by design, and that's the way we codified things in the C++ Standard Technical Report 1 (TR1) so it's not going to change now, unless the TR1 does of course. The rational is that you often have a series of fields each of which is terminated by a specific string. In this case you want an empty last field to be suppressed. John. </pre> Ticket