I commented this before but deleted it because I hadn't tested my code properly. Anyway, here is a version that works.

You're right Zig isn't quite as powerful, but you don't need type erasure if you have enough monomorphization. It's a bit annoying to use since you have to capture the comptime version of b inside the inline switch prongs, and get_value does need to take a comptime bool instead of a runtime one. It's functionally the same, except that instead of using the bool to prove the type of the type-erased value is correct and delaying the actual if (b) check to runtime, we're moving it to compile time and instead proving that b has the right value for each case, then generating specialized code.

This does NOT mean that it isn't dependent on user input, the call do_thing(get_user_input()) would absolutely work. do_thing has no compile-time parameters at all.

I don't have the natToString thing because it's a bit more annoying in Zig and would obscure the point.

    const std = @import("std");
    
    fn get_value(comptime b: bool) if (b) u32 else []const u8 {
        if (b) return 12
        else return "string";
    }
    
    fn do_thing(b: bool) void {
        switch (b) {
            inline true => |known_b| std.log.info("{d}", .{get_value(known_b)}),
            inline false => |known_b| std.log.info("{s}", .{get_value(known_b)}),
        }
    }
    
    pub fn main() void {
        do_thing(true);
        do_thing(false);
    }

You could define a function

    fn pick_type(comptime b: bool) type {
        if (b) return u32 else return []const u8;
    }

and change the signature

    fn get_value(comptime b: bool) pick_type(b)

if you wish.

Perhaps more convincingly, you can use inline for with a similar effect. It's obviously horrible code nobody would ever write but I think it might illustrate the point.

    fn do_thing(b: bool) void {
        inline for (0..2) |i| { // go through all bool variants
            const known_b = (i != 0);
            
            if (known_b == b) {
                // Essentially what we have now is a known_b which is proven
                // at compile-time to be equal to whatever runtime b we have.
                // So we're free to do any kind of dependent type things we'd like
                // with this value.
                
                const value = get_value(known_b);
                // Here we know the type of value but it still depends on the runtime b.
                
                if (known_b) std.log.info("{d}", .{value}) // treated as an int
                else std.log.info("{s}", .{value}); // treated as a string
                
                // We can also just decide based on the type of value at this point.
                if (@TypeOf(value) == u32) ... else ...;
                // Or, a switch
                switch (@TypeOf(value)) {
                    u32 => ...,
                    []const u8 => ...,
                }
            }
        }
    }

user:	ioanaci
created:	November 11, 2025
karma:	12