Giant neutron halos in medium-heavy nuclei are studied in the framework of the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) approach with Skyrme interactions. The appearance of such structures depends sensitively on the effective interaction adopted. This is illustrated by comparing the predictions of SLy4 and SkI4 in the Ca and Zr isotopic chains. The former force gives no halo effect, the latter predicts a neutron halo in the Zr chain with A>122 due to the weakly bound orbitals 3p1/2 and 3p3/2. The

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... of the halo is analyzed in terms of the occupation probabilities of these orbitals and their partial contributions to the neutron density. The anti-halo effect in Ni and Zr isotopes is also discussed by comparing the occupation probabilities of Hartree-Fock neutron single-particle states near the Fermi energy with the corresponding HFB quasiparticle states.