Unix equivalent of a variant??

[Jay Moore]

On Tuesday 01 February 2005 10:43 am, Jonathon McKitrick wrote:
> Hey everyone,
>
> I'm finally doing something very exciting here at work: porting software to
> Unix!
>
> I need the equivalent of a variant, however.  A hold-everything variable
> that can be any type in C/C++.  Is there something already out there I can
> use or should I just roll my own?

I think you should read and understand MS' documentation on the variant data 
type before you spend much time trying to code this for *nix.  IIRC, the 
Variant data type is limited to development environments like "Visual Basic".  
I'm thinking there must be an awful lot of overhead associated with handling 
a "Variant" data type, as every use of it must figure out what the "real" 
datat type is. I don't know what your objective is, and certainly don't 
pretend to tell you this shouldn't be done, but - just because MS has done 
it, does not mean it is a good thing to do in general.

Jay