Re: Boosting boost

From: williamkempf_at_[hidden]
Date: 2001-10-17 14:39:01

--- In boost_at_y..., Sebastien Marc <sebmarc_at_y...> wrote:
> Yes steve, i understood that.
> 
> What is not clear to me is that an exception is
> thrown. I would have expected the convertion, the
> actual cast from any, containing 5, to const char *)
> to work. 
> 
> To me, the resulting string s should contain "5" but
> instead the exception is thown.

The boost::any class does not allow you to coerce the type stored 
into another type via any_cast<>.  That's pretty appearant in the 
documentation, and I didn't see any place in the article that seemed 
to suggest otherwise.  The sole purpose of any_cast<> is to cast a 
boost::any into the type of object that is stored within the 
boost::any object.  If you store a const char* you can only 
any_cast<> to a const char*.  Attempts to do otherwise result in 
either an exception or a null pointer return according to the rules 
given by Steve.

Bill Kempf