Compiler as dll

[Daniel Keep]

Bill Baxter wrote:
> Does Tango's Variant have a fixed type?

No; it's like Phobos'.

> It seems the std2 Variant doesn't really care what the type of the
> thing you stuff in it is, as long as it fits in the memory space
> allotted.   How is that useful?   What's the use case for needing
> something that can be either 2.4f or "fred"?    (Sorry I don't know
> what a "CVar" system is...)

Think about Quake, or anything based on Id's engines.  CVars are
basically global variables you can set from the in-game console.  The
original problem was this:

"I want a hash indexed by string going to... um... er... anything!"

And thus, Variant was born.  Incidentally, I've since changed to a
design involving callbacks, so there you go.

I suppose that it's, in a way, like D's support for typesafe variadic
functions; except it only takes one value. :P

> What I actually needed was something
> with a fixed, internal type that could expose its value in a flexible
> way via templated get/set routines.  But for me a float property is
> never going to mutate into a string property.
> 
> --bb

OK, your turn: why would you want something that wraps a single type in
itself and has to be accessed via templates?  Couldn't you just... use
the type you want with templates?

  -- Daniel