The "void*" of C solves a frequently encountered problem, but it has an inappropriate and misleading name, because such a pointer points to something, it does not point to nothing. Moreover, it does not have a size.

The correct solution in a programming language is to have a primitive bit string type (with a length that is a byte multiple) and to have a concise way (e.g. with dedicated symbolic operators) to write a type conversion from any data type to a bit string and a type conversion from a bit string to any data type.

Then the operations that make sense for arbitrary bit strings, e.g. copying, moving, input/output operations (e.g. file read and write), applying Boolean functions, shall have formal parameters of this type.

Much of what I have described here already existed in the language IBM PL/I, more than 60 years ago, except that in it only the conversion towards a bit string was explicit, with the built-in function "bit", while the conversions from bit strings to other data types were done implicitly, upon variable assignment.

Like any kind of array, a bit string must have an associated size, so there should be no need to specify it explicitly as a separate parameter.