Variant data do not conform to a specific data type and can contain attributes. LabVIEW represents variant data with the variant data type. The variant data type differs from other data types because it stores the control or indicator name, information about the data type from which you converted, and the data itself, which allows LabVIEW to correctly convert the variant data type to the data type you want.
Use the Variant functions to create and manipulate variant data. You can convert flattened data and LabVIEW data to variant data and convert variant data to LabVIEW data.
The variant data type allows you to store attributes of the data. An attribute is information about the data that you define and the variant data type stores. For example, if you want to know the time when a piece of data was created, you can store the data as variant data and add an attribute called Time to store the time string. The attribute data can be of any type. You also can delete or retrieve attributes from variant data.
