http://dlang.org/phobos/std_variant.html
says: This module implements a discriminated union type (a.k.a. tagged union, algebraic type). Yet, the wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagged_union says: a tag field explicitly indicates which one is in use. and I don't see any indication of a tag field in the std_variant.html page. Another wiki reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disjoint_union is more explicit because it pairs the tag with the value: (x,i) where x is the value and i is the tag. One reason for an explicit tag is that the bounded types may contain the same type twice. This has lead to problems in boost::variant as evidenced by the post: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.parsers.spirit.general/17118 In addition, both variant and tuple have a common part, a metafunction mapping from a tag to a type; hence, this same common part could be used to implement both tuple and a tagged variant. A variant which actually contained a tag field I think would be more general in that it would allow duplicate types among the bounded types just as a tuple's bounded types can contain duplicate types. -regards, Larry