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Asked: 2026-06-11T17:36:02+00:00

I had always thought that checking the pointer after casting a void* to a

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I had always thought that checking the pointer after casting a void* to a struct* was a valid way to avoid invalid casts. Something like

MyStructOne* pStructOne = (MyStructOne*)someVoidPointer;
if(!pStructOne)
   return 0;

It appears that this is not the case as I can cast the same data to two different structs and get the same valid address. The program is then happy to populate my struct fields with whatever random data is in there.

What is a safe way of casting struct pointers?

I can’t use dynamic_cast<> as it’s not a class.

Thanks for the help!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If you have any control over the struct layout you can put your own type enumeration at the front of every struct to verify the type. This works in both C and C++.

    If you can’t use an enumeration because not all types are known ahead of time, you can use a GUID. Or a pointer to static variable or member that is unique per struct.

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