Re: ANSI C clarifications, with citations (was Re: [patch-2.4

[Olivier Galibert]

On Tue, Jun 27, 2000 at 12:05:23PM -0400, Sandy Harris wrote:
> > >     > 7. You can freely cast between any two pointer types
> 
> Cast a char * to int * on any architecture with strong alignmenmt
> restrictions and watch your code commit messy suicide.

No.  It is "cast a char * to int * _and_dereference_it_".  He never
told about dereferencing.  Freely casting between different pointers
types works perfectly on most if not all modern[1] architectures, was
heavily used before the time of void * (look at the pre-ISO malloc()
prototype), and is still in heady use in C code that tries to mimic OO
abstraction in particular.

  OG.

[1] Emphasis on modern.  Tagged pointers are gone.