I'm sorry, but this is unacceptable (union members and ctors)

[Aaron W. LaFramboise]

michael.a wrote:

> So in closing, I'm interested in any ideas / advice, but compromising the
> existing codebase is completely out of the question. You have my
> appreciation in advance naturally...

I suspect the proper solution here is something from www.boost.org.  You 
didn't say exactly what you needed, but if its anything related to a 
common programming pattern, Boost has probably already implemented it in 
a portable or standard manner.  See 
<http://www.boost.org/libs/libraries.htm>.

In particular, see Boost optional, and aligned_storage in Boost typetraits.

Other people have already pointed it out, but I'll say it again: 
language extensions are almost always the wrong solution for these sorts 
of problems.