"Any" type using "Boost"

You can get Boost at http://www.boost.org/

The particular file I am curious is this: http://www.boost.org/boost/any.hpp

*(any_cast<int>(const_cast<any *>(&x)));

Only problem is... How can I find out what int is? I want to overload the << operator so that you can cout it without knowing the datatype. Is there a way to use it without specifying <int> ?

Cause if you have this:

Code:

int main()
{
	any x(10);
	//x.getdata();
	cout << *(any_cast<int>(const_cast<any *>(&x)));
	cout << endl;
	x = 'a';
	//x.getdata();
	cout << *(any_cast<int>(const_cast<any *>(&x)));
	cout << endl;

	return 0;
}

Also, you can use
cout << any_cast<int>(x);
instead of using the const_cast.

You get a run time error because it isn't an int, but a char.

Would you need to have a "getint()" and a "getchar()" etc function for every datatype that you want?

So is "held" actually stored in a way you can get it without knowing the type?

Any does not know it's "type" at compile time, thus I beleve you need to rely on run-time testing. To build getchar() you need to ether test x.type()==typeid(char) or do the cast and catch the exception.