A new WG21 paper is available. A copy is linked below, and the paper will also appear in the next normal WG21 mailing. If you are not a committee member, please use the comments section below or the std-proposals forum for public discussion.

Document number: N3804

Date: 2013-10-09

Any Library Proposal (Revision 3)

by Beman Dawes, Kevlin Henney, Daniel Krügler

Excerpt:

This paper proposes a type-safe container for single values of value types. The C++ standards committee is planning to include the proposal in a library Technical Specification (TS).

The proposal is based on the Boost Any Library (see www.boost.org/libs/any). The Boost version of library has been in wide use for over a decade, and the library has been implemented at least twice in addition to the Boost implementation. The proposal is a pure addition to the standard library, requires no modifications to any C++14 standard library components, requires no compiler support, and will have no effect on existing namespace-disciplined code.