How to Store Heterogeneous Data in Variable-Sized Containers in C ?

Heterogeneous Containers in C

The STL provides a wide range of containers to handle data with specific requirements, such as fixed and variable sizes, data of same and different types, sorted and unsorted data, and sequential and random access. However, as you have observed, there is no container in the STL that combines variable size with support for different data types.

To address this specific requirement, C does not offer a native container. Instead, there are two main approaches to storing heterogeneous data in variable-sized containers:

1. Containers of Pointers or References:

   You can store a container of pointers or references to objects of different types that inherit from a common base class. For example, you could have a std::vector to hold objects of derived types derived from MyBaseType.

2. Boost Library:

   The Boost library provides two powerful tools for handling heterogeneous data:

   • boost::any: Allows you to store objects of any type. It provides methods for casting and manipulating the stored value.
   • boost::variant: Restricts storage to a finite set of known types. It provides type-safe access to the stored value based on the specified type.

The code examples provided in the question's answer demonstrate how to use boost::any to create a variable-sized container that can store values of different types, such as integers and strings. boost::variant, on the other hand, allows you to define a set of allowed types and store values of those types, providing type-safe access.

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