Introduction

Why use std::any?

With std::optional you can represent a regular Type values or mark it as empty. With std::variant you can wrap several type alternatives into one entity.

C++17 gives us one more wrapper type: std::any which can hold anything in a type-safe way.

What you’ll learn in this Module:

• Why void* is a very unsafe pattern

• std::any and its basic usage

• std::any use cases with examples

• any_cast and how to use all its “modes​”

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Let’s get started with the basics.