Boost Variant: how to get currently held type?

Question

As I understood all types of boost.variant are parsed into real types (meaning as if boost variant a; a=\"bla-bla\" would after compilation t

Answer 1

You can use the following that both result in std::type_info objects:

• the type() member function of boost::variant,
• the C++ operator typeid() that can be applied to any type or typed expression,

together with the member function std::type_info::operator==, to check which type the boost::variant is currently storing. For example,

boost::variant container;
container = "Hello world";

if (container.type() == typeid(std::string)) {
    std::cout << "Found a string: " << boost::get(container);
}
else if (container.type() == typeid(int)) {
    std::cout << "Found an int: " << boost::get(container);
}