C++ style cast from unsigned char * to const char *

Question

I have:

unsigned char *foo();
std::string str;
str.append(static_cast(foo()));

The error: invalid static_cast from

Answer 1

Too many comments to make to different answers, so I'll leave another answer here.

You can and should use reinterpret_cast<>, in your case

str.append(reinterpret_cast<const char*>(foo()));

because, while these two are different types, the 2014 standard, chapter 3.9.1 Fundamental types [basic.fundamental] says there is a relationship between them:

Plain char, signed char and unsigned char are three distinct types, collectively called narrow character types. A char, a signed char, and an unsigned char occupy the same amount of storage and have the same alignment requirements (3.11); that is, they have the same object representation.

(selection is mine)

Here's an available link: https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/types#Character_types

Using wchar_t for Unicode/multibyte strings is outdated: Should I use wchar_t when using UTF-8?