title: Changing variable types after initialization C++
body: <p>I'm coming from node.js and I was wondering if there is a way to do this in C++. What would be the C++ equivalent of:</p>
  
  <pre><code>var string = "hello";
  string = return_int(string); //function returns an integer
  // at this point the variable string is an integer
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So in C++ I want to do something kind of like this...</p>
  
  <pre><code>int return_int(std::string string){
       //do stuff here
       return 7; //return some int
  }
  int main(){
      std::string string{"hello"};
      string = return_int(string); //an easy and performant way to make this happen?
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I'm working with JSON and I need to enumerate some strings. I do realize that I could just assign the return value of <code>return_int()</code> to another variable, but I want to know if it's possible to reassign the type of variable from a string to an int for sake of learning and readability.</p>