Question

I understand that reinterpret_cast may do it, but I think it did not do the data conversion. I don’t want to loop over and do them one by one, and wonder whether there is an elegant way to do both the pointer type and data type conversion.
Thanks!

Answer 1

If, as I am assuming, you have some float* that points to the first element in an array of floats and you want to use them as ints then I suggest a few options:

1. If you don’t want float, don’t get floats. Just store an array of ints in the first place.

2. Likewise, if you don’t want ints, then change your code to use floats throughout.

3. If you do indeed want to have an array of floats and at some point want to convert them to ints, do it when you need it. Use static_cast<int> to do the conversion on each element in a safe manner.

4. If you’d like to convert the whole array at once, then I suggest you do something like so:

   float float_array[N] = /* ... */;
   std::vector<int> ints(float_array, float_array + N);
   

5. Alternatively, if you really want to stick with arrays, use std::copy:

   float float_array[N] = /* ... */;
   int int_array[N];
   std::copy(float_array, float_array + N, int_array);
   

   The std::vector above is much preferred, however.