Another casting question

Don't you just hate when other people are right ?

:)

Thanks
/CrypToniC

It depends on what you're casting.  In the example you've given, the cast really has no effect, because you're casting from one pointer type (uint8) to another pointer type (uint32).  All pointers are the same size, so there is really nothing to convert...

In your example, your casts are NOT dereferencing the memory address, so you aren't doing anything to change the value.

If you're casting between different types, then the double casting will most definitely have an effect.

If you wanted the above code to show the effects of the double cast, you would need to cast the _contents_ of the memory address, not the address itself, and to do that, you need to dereference the pointers...

For example:

uint32 *value;
uint32 x = 300;   /* for 'some memory address' */

If you do this:

value = (uint32*) (uint8 *) x;

then (*value) will be 300.

However, if you dereference the pointer, it will be converted to the type represented by that pointer.  For example:

value = (uint32*) * (uint8*) x;

then (*value) will be 44 (i.e. the lower 8 bits)...

Basically, if you have multiple casts, they will be evaluated one at a time, from right to left, causing a conversion each time.  So if you have the statement:

double x = (double)(float)(int)(short)(char) 0x1234567890;

the value "0x1234567890" will be truncated to the size of a char, then expanded to the size of a short, then an int, converted to a float, then to a double.