concept name(s): container of different types which can be used like a type

Question

I am looking for the name(s) of a concept I heard of. I know that it does not exist in many programming languages, but I think it exists at least in C++.

Let me try to explain the concept.

Assume I want to define a generic collection in some programming language, and I want this collection to contain elements of type A and type B. In object oriented languages like C# or Java I can do this in at least two different ways:

1. Define the collection to contain elements of type object.
2. Create a type (or interface) C and change the code so that A and B both inherit from (or implement) C. Then define the collection to contain elements of type C.

Both ways have their problems:

1. allows me to put everything into the collection instead of just A and B, which might not be what I want.
2. only works if I can modify the code of A and B.

And the concept that I am looking for allows a third approach:

3. define a "type container" T which contains both A and B and can be used like a regular type, so that I can create a collection of T.

In this case, I would only be able to put A and B into the collection, but I would not be required to change the code of A and B.

The same concept allows defining methods that take either an A or B as input and process them the same way. E.g. we might want to define a method Square which takes an int or a float x and returns x*x. With this concept, we would not need to define two methods (one for int, one for float).

Answer 1

The name of the concept you're looking for is a Union Type.

Contrast this with an intersection type, which is where all elements of your collection would have to inherit from both A and B.