STL container assignment and const pointers

Question

This compiles:

int* p1;
const int* p2;
p2 = p1;

This does not:

vector v1;
vector v2;
v2 = v1;         


        

Answer 1

Dangerous, unless you know the types are absolutely compatible:

v2 = reinterpret_cast & >(v1);

Most STL implementations do use a specialization were all vectors of pointers share the same underlying implementation. This is since (void *) is typically the same size as (int *) or any other pointer type.