Casting void pointers

Question

I\'ve seen a lot of the following in older C code:

type_t *x = (type_t *) malloc(...);

What\'s the point of casting the pointer returned fr

Answer 1

The problem here is not compatibility with any dialect of C. The problem is C++. In C++, a void pointer cannot be automatically converted to any other pointer type. So, without an explicit cast, this code would not compile with a C++ compiler.