Question

I’m debugging a program from a book. The program appears to work but I do not understand one line which I comment below.

#include <pthread.h>
#include <stdio.h>
/* Compute successive prime numbers (very inefficiently). Return the
Nth prime number, where N is the value pointed to by *ARG. */
void* compute_prime (void* arg)
{
int candidate = 2;
int n = *((int*) arg);
while (1) {
int factor;
int is_prime = 1;
/* Test primality by successive division. */
for (factor = 2; factor < candidate; ++factor)
if (candidate % factor == 0) {
is_prime = 0;
break;
}
/* Is this the prime number we’re looking for? */
if (is_prime) {
if (--n == 0)
/* Return the desired prime number as the thread return value. */
return (void*) candidate;    // why is this casting valid? (candidate is not even a pointer)
}
++candidate;

}
return NULL;
}
int main ()
{
pthread_t thread;
int which_prime = 5000;
int prime;
/* Start the computing thread, up to the 5,000th prime number. */
pthread_create (&thread, NULL, &compute_prime, &which_prime);
/* Do some other work here... */
/* Wait for the prime number thread to complete, and get the result. */
pthread_join (thread, (void*) &prime);
/* Print the largest prime it computed. */
printf(“The %dth prime number is %d.\n”, which_prime, prime);
return 0;
}

Answer 1

It’s not valid. It simply happens to work if sizeof(int) == sizeof(void *), which happens on many systems.

A void * is only guaranteed to be able to hold pointers to data objects.

Here is a C FAQ on the subject.

How are integers converted to and from pointers? Can I temporarily
stuff an integer into a pointer, or vice versa?

Pointer-to-integer and integer-to-pointer conversions are
implementation-defined (see question 11.33), and there is no longer
any guarantee that pointers can be converted to integers and back,
without change

Forcing pointers into integers, or integers into pointers, has never
been good practice