Using typeid to check if something is an array

"Any" type using "Boost"

That topic is related, sort of... its the same class, but this is a different thing I'm trying to do.

I have code that technically would "work"...

The error is:
cannot specify explicit initializer for arrays

If the user tells it it is a char* instead of just a regular array, it will compile, only it isn't a character array anymore really... and I want the user to be able to choose between char[] and char*...

Code:

holder(const ValueType & value)
              : held(value)
            {//non array (or pointer)
            }

That won't take a string... something like

Code:

char x[10] = "abcd";
holder y(x);

won't compile, while

Code:

char x[10] = "abcd";
holder y((char*)x);

or

Code:

char *x = "abcd";
holder y(x);

will.

My understanding of the problem is that the fact that it is declared as

ValueType held;

in the class, and it can't figure out how to make something like

"char[20] held;"

did u try &x ?

That wouldn't work if you did

Code:

holder y("abcd");

Also, how can you specify a template type with that?

There's this function in the main class called "any"

Code:

    template<typename ValueType>
    ValueType any_cast(const any & operand)
    {
        const ValueType * result = any_cast<ValueType>(&operand);
        if(!result)
            throw bad_any_cast();
        return *result;
    }

And if you pass it a character array when you initialized the holder (it does it when you declare something like
char y[10] = "abcd";
any x = &y;
That works... but you can't get it back because it can't convert 'const char [10]' to 'char *'


Er... I just found a way... but I don't know how to make it more convenient:

cout << *any_cast<char(*)[10]>(x);

Not only that, you need to know the exact size... and there's no way to do that.

Unless someone can figure it out, I'll just remove the code that let you do the character array in the first place.

Thanks anyway!