On Sun, 9 Dec 2001, assaflavieatwork wrote:

If all you want to do is output the value inside the 'any' you can add a virtual member to the place_holder/holder classes (inside any's impl) that will output to a ostream&.

That is exactly my need

in place_holder: virtual ostream& write(ostream&) = 0;

You mean placeholder? I have added this declaration as a pure virtual function in the queries part. class placeholder { ... public: // queries ... virtual ostream& write(ostream&) = 0; };

in holder: ostream& write(ostream& o) { o << held; };

I have added the declaration in the derived class holder from the abstract base class placeholder template<typename ValueType> class holder : public placeholder { ... public: // queries ... ostream& write(std::ostream& os) { os << held; } public: // representation ValueType held; };

outside any: std::ostream& operator << (std::ostream& out, const any& value) { return value.write(out); };

I don't understand how this can work since the class any contains a pointer to an object of class placeholder. This object has a member function write but not the class any itself? I have another comment more general about the any class The declaration placeholder * content; in the any class might be public or private depending on the value of the value of the define BOOST_NO_MEMBER_TEMPLATE_FRIENDS. Is it safe? #ifndef BOOST_NO_MEMBER_TEMPLATE_FRIENDS private: // representation template<typename ValueType> friend ValueType * any_cast(any *); #else public: // representation (public so any_cast can be non-friend) #endif placeholder * content; };

But that of course means changing the any.hpp file which of course isn't something everyone is willing to do...

Why not including a simple overloading of the << operator?

Anyway, it won't help you if you want to read the any back from an istream. You'll have to write some type information to the stream or else you'll just interpret everything as a string.

I understand that but that is not what I want to do. Sincerely Patrick Guio