On Fri, Apr 12, 2024 at 1:52 PM Mihail Mihaylov <
mihail.mihailov_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> OK, you convinced me (kind of). I've been working for years in a code base
> that has its own any-like object, but I haven't really used `std::any`
> itself. It took me a while to realize how significant it is that `any_cast`
> returns a copy instead of a reference. It now seems to me that the
> designers of `std/boost::any` never meant for polymorphic types to be
> stored in it and the question about how to get a base out of the stored
> derived value goes outside of its intended usage.
>

Scratch that, it turns out that `any_cast<A>(any*)` returns an `A*` to the
value inside, which makes it meaningful to request the ability for this
overload to return a non-null `A*` when the `any` contains a `B` where `B`
is derived from `A`.

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