Re: [boost] Formal review or Variant Library (Ed B.)

From: Peter Dimov (pdimov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-02-19 08:20:04

Joel de Guzman wrote:
> David Abrahams wrote:
>
>> BTW, I just realized that a conversion from variant<T> to optional<T>
>> could be used to do extraction as well.  Maybe it would be better to
>> ditch extract altogether and just use optional?
>
> I think this makes sense. The disadvantage is the overhead of optional
> just to do "extract"ion.

That means an extra copy and inability to change that data held in the
variant using non-const extract. If we really need to go that route, it's
probably better to just make extract return a value.