Re: [Boost-users] Passing dynamic arguments with boost?

From: Simon Pickles (sipickles_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-07-11 15:21:51

John Femiani wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> After programming with Python and switching back to C++, I am 
>> missing the flexibility of a scripted language.
>>
>> Specifically, I am annoyed at having to specify the arguments 
>> of a function at compile time. Is there anyway I can avoid 
>> specifying the exact arg structure? I thought boost might do 
>> this somehow?
>>
>> Say for example, I have a message handler function. I want to 
>> be able to send all sorts of arguments to the same function, 
>> which can then deduce what to do according to the data held 
>> in those args. I don't want to have to overload everything as 
>> I am passing these message handlers around using 
>> boost::function/boost::bind.
>>
>>     
>
>
> Are you thinking of named arguments, or do you want 'isinstance'?
>   
I was hoping to be able to call one function with different args, 
wrapping those args somehow.

In python, I could call a function with a list, dict or tuple. Since 
this one object was the argument, it didn't matter what it contained.

I know I could pass a vector in C++, but this needs a single data type. 
In python I could call:

MyFunc((1, "2", anObject)) # - all in a tuple
MyFunc(("aardvark", 42)) # another tuple

Anyway to replicate this very convenient functionality?

Si