c++ - Reinterpret_cast vs. C-style cast

Question

I hear that reinterpret_cast is implementation defined, but I don't know what this really means. Can you provide an example of how it can go wrong, and it goes wrong, is it better to use C-Style cast?

Answer 1

The C-style cast isn't better.

It simply tries the various C++-style casts in order, until it finds one that works. That means that when it acts like a reinterpret_cast, it has the exact same problems as a reinterpret_cast. But in addition, it has these problems:

• It can do many different things, and it's not always clear from reading the code which type of cast will be invoked (it might behave like a reinterpret_cast, a const_cast or a static_cast, and those do very different things)
• Consequently, changing the surrounding code might change the behaviour of the cast
• It's hard to find when reading or searching the code - reinterpret_cast is easy to find, which is good, because casts are ugly and should be paid attention to when used. Conversely, a C-style cast (as in (int)42.0) is much harder to find reliably by searching

To answer the other part of your question, yes, reinterpret_cast is implementation-defined. This means that when you use it to convert from, say, an int* to a float*, then you have no guarantee that the resulting pointer will point to the same address. That part is implementation-defined. But if you take the resulting float* and reinterpret_cast it back into an int*, then you will get the original pointer. That part is guaranteed.

But again, remember that this is true whether you use reinterpret_cast or a C-style cast:

int i;
int* p0 = &i;

float* p1 = (float*)p0; // implementation-defined result
float* p2 = reinterpret_cast<float*>(p0); // implementation-defined result

int* p3 = (int*)p1; // guaranteed that p3 == p0
int* p4 = (int*)p2; // guaranteed that p4 == p0
int* p5 = reinterpret_cast<int*>(p1); // guaranteed that p5 == p0
int* p6 = reinterpret_cast<int*>(p2); // guaranteed that p6 == p0