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by proto_lambda
1318 days ago
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> You can obviously only call common methods That sounds like trait objects/dynamic dispatch/`dyn`, which comes with runtime costs. > or have to pattern match later and have a way to tell them apart. That "way to tell them apart" is a tag, which would make it a tagged union/enum, not an untagged union. Those already exist, though not in an anonymous flavour. |
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> That "way to tell them apart" is a tag, which would make it a tagged union/enum, not an untagged union.
No. The difference is that a tagged union (sum type) is defined in advance but generally a union is not necessarily tagged but _can_ be tagged.
Example: say you have tagged union with 3 different types / tags A, B and C. You can now define an adhoc/untagged union that is A | C. That means, we can guarantee at compile time, that we will be able to tell A and C apart later. But it is still not the same, because the combination of A and C was decided adhoc and was not predefined by the developer anywhere necessarily - which is what makes it different from A, B, C which where specifically defined by the developer.