Question

I have a boost variant of looking like this: typedef boost::variant<int, float, double, long, bool, std::string, boost::posix_time::ptime> variant;

I have a need for being able to convert any of the values in this variant to a std::string, I wondered if there is some template type function I could use to do this?

Or what would be the most effective way?

I would currently implement a bunch of overloaded functions, each taking a type and then doing the conversion using std::stringstream or for posix_time i’d use it’s conversion function. Perhaps there is a better way?

Answer 1

Use boost::lexical_cast, which hides the whole stringstream thing behind a convenient wrapper. This also works with boost::posix_time, since it has a suitable operator<<.