falk.tannhauser@crf.canon.fr (Falk Tannh   user) wrote in message news:<40BF1B13.1848166F@crf.canon.fr>...
..
> Apart from breaking C compatibility for pointers to POD types (5.4/5
> says that, barring const cast, C-style cast is equivalent to reinterpret
> cast,
> unless static cast is possible),

The C standard does not specify where a pointer points when it is
converted to a pointer to an unrelated non-character type. The only
thing it says is that the new pointer, if converted back to the
original type, must compare equal to the original pointer value.

The C standard does specify, for instance, that converting a pointer
to a structure type into a pointer to the type of it's first member
produces a pointer to that member of the structure pointed at by the
original pointer. Similar guarantees apply to unions and arrays.
That's what I meant by "related types". However, for unrelated types
there's no guarantees.

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