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Date:      Thu, 3 Feb 2005 05:21:41 -0600
From:      Jay Moore <jaymo@cromagnon.cullmail.com>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Cc:        Jonathon McKitrick <jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org>
Subject:   Re: Unix equivalent of a variant??
Message-ID:  <200502030521.41528.jaymo@cromagnon.cullmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20050201164337.GA78979@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org>
References:  <20050201164337.GA78979@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org>

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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



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