A DiscriminatedUnion introduced by MicroSoft's ComAutomation.

The Variant DataType is a struct consiting of a member "vt", which contains the enum for the type currently stored in the Variant, and a union who's largest member is a decimal stored as a 12 byte unsigned integer scaled by a variable power of 10. Thusly, a Variant is always costs you 16 bytes at minimum.

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Variant''s'' are used by ScriptingLanguage''''''s because they are typeless. However, Variant''s'' also are used as a form of enabling overloading for an property/method in an interface.

''Actually, Variants are used by typeless ScriptingLanguages. Some aren't typeless.'' --PierrePhaneuf

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Note: The actual TypeName is '''Variant''', but that's not a valid WikiName.

VC++ has a non-heinous wrapper called _variant_t.

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CategoryComponentObjectModel