The boost libraries are a free set of libraries that contain lots of additional functionality for C++, such as regular expressions, cross-platform file system manipulation, easy casting between strings and integers, and many varieties of safe pointers.
Check this page on MSDN for information about boost for Visual C++ developers, as well as a link to the boost homepage.
Feel free to post here if you have issues installing or using boost!
Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules -- and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress.