void pointers: difference between C and C++
I'm trying to understand the differences between C and C++ with regards to void pointers. the following compiles in C but not C++ (all compilations done with gcc/g++ -ansi -pedantic -Wall):
int* p = malloc(sizeof(int));
Because malloc
returns void*
, which C++ doesn't allow to assign to int*
while C does allow that.
However, here:
void foo(void* vptr)
{
}
int main()
{
int* p = (int*) malloc(sizeof(int));
foo(p);
return 0;
}
Both C++ and C compile it with no complains. Why?
K&R2 say:
Any pointer to an object may be converted to type
void *
without loss of information. If the result is converted back to the original pointer type, the original pointer is recovered.
And this pretty sums all there is about void*
conversions in C. What does C++ standard dictate?
In C, pointer conversions to and from void*
were always implicit.
In C++, conversions from T*
to void*
are implicit, but void*
to anything else requires a cast.
C++ is more strongly-typed than C. Many conversions, specially those that imply a different interpretation of the value, require an explicit conversion. The new operator in C++ is a type-safe way to allocate memory on heap, without an explicit cast.