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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-06T17:09:32+00:00

So we know that the standard doesn’t force pointer sizes to be equal. (

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So we know that the standard doesn’t force pointer sizes to be equal. (here and here) (and not talking about function pointers)

I was wondering how in reality that can be an issue. We know that void * can hold anything, so if the pointer sizes are different, that would be the biggest size. Given that, assigning a void ** to a char ** means trouble.

My question is how dangerous would it be to assume void * and char * have the same size? Is there actually an architecture where this is not true?

Also, 16-bit dos is not what I want to hear! 😉

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  1. Editorial Team

    void * and char * are guaranteed to have the same size.

    void ** is not guaranteed to have the same size as char ** (but very likey on your implementation they will).

    (C99, 6.2.5p27) “A pointer to void shall have the same representation and alignment requirements as a pointer to a character type […] Pointers to other types need not have the same representation or alignment requirements.”

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