C++ Coding Standards: 101 Rules, Guidelines, and Best Practices

92. Avoid using reinterpret_cast

Summary

Lies have short legs (German and Romanian proverb): Don’t try to use reinterpret_cast to force the compiler to reinterpret the bits of an object of one type as being the bits of an object of a different type. That’s the opposite of maintaining type safety, and reinterpret_cast isn’t even guaranteed to do that or anything else in particular.

Discussion

Recall: If you lie to the compiler, it will get its revenge. —Henry Spencer

reinterpret_cast reflects the strongest assumption a programmer can make about object representation, namely that the programmer knows better than the compiler—to the point of being determined to pick an argument with the compiler’s carefully maintained type information. Compilers ...