Hi, after I go really quick help here from Ion, I've another question. I managed it to implement a map<string, string> in shared memory and I'm able to put pairs into the map in one process and read them in another process. To put pair into the map I wrote: typedef boost::interprocess::allocator<char, boost::interprocess::managed_shared_memory::segment_manager> ShmemStringAllocator; typedef boost::interprocess::basic_string<char, char_traits<char>, ShmemStringAllocator> MyString; MyString key(segment.get_segment_manager()); MyString value(segment.get_segment_manager()); key = "key1"; value = "value1"; mymap->insert(std::pair<MyString, MyString>(key, value)); (For the complete code see http://www.hottis.de/boost/strings/. Thanks.) What I'm wondering is: will the memory required for key and value be freed automatically in the writing process (put.C)? When I like to erase an element from the map, do I need to do more than just calling mymap->erase(key)? And finally when I'm done and like to remove the whole map, is more required than segment.destroy<MyMap>("MyMap")? Will all the MyString's in the map go too? Furthermore: is it possible to use a map in shared memory as an associative array and write: MyString value = (*mymap)[key]; It doesn't compile for me. Thanks, Wolfgang