What are the rules for casting pointers in C?

Question

K&R doesn\'t go over it, but they use it. I tried seeing how it\'d work by writing an example program, but it didn\'t go so well:

#include 

        

Answer 1

I suspect you need a more general answer:

There are no rules on casting pointers in C! The language lets you cast any pointer to any other pointer without comment.

But the thing is: There is no data conversion or whatever done! Its solely your own responsibilty that the system does not misinterpret the data after the cast - which would generally be the case, leading to runtime error.

So when casting its totally up to you to take care that if data is used from a casted pointer the data is compatible!

C is optimized for performance, so it lacks runtime reflexivity of pointers/references. But that has a price - you as a programmer have to take better care of what you are doing. You have to know on your self if what you want to do is "legal"