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What good is static_cast anyway?

April 26, 2017good static_cast

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What good is static_cast anyway?

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In spite of all the verbal stunts and pedagogy, there’s no escape from admitting that static_cast is really useless. Almost every static_cast expression is redundant since the conversion would take place even if you didn’t use that operator at all. Examples of such redundant casts include: • Conversion of base classes to derived classes, including pointers and references Derived *p= static_cast (pbase); • Conversions from one numeric type to another: int result= static_cast(12.56); • Conversion to void*: void*opaque= static_cast (&myobj); Stroustrup concludes: “because static_cast is so ugly and so relatively hard to type, you’re more likely to think twice before using one”. I agree.