Conformal iterated function systems with applications to the geometry of continued fractions

In this paper we obtain some results about general conformal iterated funct ion systems. We obtain a simple characterization of the packing dimension o f the limit set of such systems and introduce some special systems which ex hibit some interesting behavior. We then apply these results to the set of values of real continued fractions with restricted entries. We pay special attention to the Hausdorff and packing measures of these sets. We also give direct interpretations of these measure theoretic results in terms of the arithmetic density properties of the set of allowed entries.