Do you mean something that would work along the lines of... std::vector<boost::any> my_vec; // fill my_vec with various data types //iterate through doubles for (auto itr = itr_begin<double>(my_vec); itr != itr_end<double>(my_vec); ++itr) { // ... } //iterate through strings for (auto itr = itr_begin<std::string>(my_vec); itr != itr_end<std::string>(my_vec); ++itr) { // ... } where itr_begin and itr_end generate iterators for the templated type over any container of type erased objects. I didn't quite get what you were suggesting at first, but yeah I think I agree that would be more useful. On Tue, May 5, 2015 at 3:37 PM, Boris Rasin <boris@pointx.org> wrote:
On 5/5/2015 9:04 PM, James Armstrong wrote:
You're correct in that a vector<boost::any> can achieve the same thing, and that would probably be the better way to implement this internally. I guess the proposal would be to provide the container interface to give some data modification functions and iterators which iterate over only a given type and such. That way there would be a standardized container with methods to deal with the data in a type specific way.
But why do you need special container type if all you want are algorithms and iterator adapters? Like I said before, this could be useful, but wouldn't it be better to write this as generic algorithms capable of working with any container of boost::any, not just vector? Better yet, any container of type erased or discriminated union objects (boost::any, boost::type_erasure::any, boost::variant, eggs::variant, etc.)?
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