Question

I have the following template function used to dump data of any standard type into a binary output stream.

template<typename T> static void
dump ( const T& v, ostream& o ) {
    o.write ( reinterpret_cast<const char*>(&v), sizeof(T));
}

Instead of the reinterpret_cast I could also use a C-style (const char*). Is there any particular reason to use reinterpret_cast? I read a few other posts where reinterpret_cast was frowned upon. But the above usage is legal and cannot be replaced with anything else, right?

Answer 1

The problem with C-Style casts is that they do a lot under the hood. See here for a detailed explanation: http://anteru.net/2007/12/18/200/

You should try to always use the C++-casts, makes life easier in the long run. The main problem with C-style casts in this case is that you could have written (char*)(&v) while with reinterpret_cast, you would need an additional const_cast, so it’s a bit safer. Plus you can easily find reinterpret_cast with a regex, which is not possible for the C-style casts.