On: The Ten Commandments for C Programmers (1987)

[throwphoton]

What can you do with a void pointer without casting it, apart from comparing it to NULL?

[eMSF → throwphoton]

You can (implicitly) convert it to another pointer type, e.g.

    int *buf = malloc(sizeof(*buf));

(It's noteworthy that while there's an implicit conversion above, there's no such thing as an implicit cast.)

[unwind → throwphoton]

This is a pretty well-regarded answer, with motivation for why you should not cast [1].

Of course it's not something everyone agrees to, but at least a lot of people seem to.

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/605845/do-i-cast-the-res...

[throwphoton → unwind]

Interesting. Not casting a void pointer return value seems like a bit of a shibboleth for the "C is not a subset of C++" community.

[enriquto → throwphoton]

A "better" shibboleth is using "new" and "old" as identifiers. It serves as a good barrier to avoid accidental C++ compilation.

[glouwbug → throwphoton]

Generic data structures work great if they use a void* since malloc returns a void*. Just malloc your structs, and suddenly a single set of 10 or so functions can work with all data types to build queues, lists, hash maps, etc

[_kst_ → throwphoton]

You can compare it for (in)equality to another void pointer.

[microtherion → throwphoton]

You can assign it to any data pointer variable, and you can printf("%p") it, for example.