Casting pointer to object to void * in C++
- by JB
I've been reading StackOverflow too much and started doubting all the code I've ever written, I keep thinking "Is that undefined behavour?" even in code that has been working for ages.
So my question - Is it safe and well defined behavour to cast a pointer to an object (In this case abstract interface classes) to a void* and then later on cast them back to the original class and call method using them?
I'm fully aware that the code that does this is probably awful. I wouldn't even consider writing it like this now (this is old code which I don't really want to change), so I'm not looking for a discussion of better ways to do this. I already know how to write it better if I ever did this again. But if it's actually broken to rely on this in C++ then I'll have to look at changing the code, if it's merely awful code then changing it won't be a priority.
I would have had no doubts about something this simple a year or two ago but as my understanding of C++ increases I actually find I have more and more worries about code being safe under the standards even if it works perfectly well. Perhaps reading too much stack overflow is a bad thing for productivity sometimes :P
