Unix equivalent of a variant??

[John]

On Thu, Feb 03, 2005 at 05:21:41AM -0600, Jay Moore wrote:
> 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.

Or, just use PERL. :)
-- 

John Lind
john at starfire.MN.ORG