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| 1 | + |
| 2 | +# cstyleCast |
| 3 | + |
| 4 | +**Category**: Type Safety<br/> |
| 5 | +**Severity**: Style<br/> |
| 6 | +**Language**: C++, not applicable for C code |
| 7 | + |
| 8 | +## Motivation |
| 9 | + |
| 10 | +Casts can be dangerous: |
| 11 | + * there can be unintentional loss of precision |
| 12 | + * there can be unintentional loss of sign |
| 13 | + * there can be unintentional loss of constness |
| 14 | + * there can be invalid type conversions |
| 15 | + |
| 16 | +## Philosophy |
| 17 | + |
| 18 | +This checker warns about old style C casts. |
| 19 | + |
| 20 | +This checker is not about readability. It is about safety. |
| 21 | + |
| 22 | +We only want to warn if there are possible safety issues and a C++ cast can provide better safety. |
| 23 | + |
| 24 | +## Other tools / complements |
| 25 | + |
| 26 | +Related checkers: |
| 27 | + * Misra C 11.8 is violated if there is "loss of constness" |
| 28 | + * Misra C++ 8.2.2 is more pedantic than this checker and warns about all C style casts. |
| 29 | + * Warnings about "loss of constness" may be written by compilers (gcc/clang reports Wcast-qual). |
| 30 | + |
| 31 | +## Example |
| 32 | + |
| 33 | +### Compliant C style cast |
| 34 | + |
| 35 | +The goal is to not warn about "safe" and/or "intentional" casts. For example: |
| 36 | +``` |
| 37 | +int *p = (int*)0; |
| 38 | +``` |
| 39 | +Replacing the C style cast with a corresponding C++ cast would not make the code safer. |
| 40 | + |
| 41 | +### Non compliant C style cast |
| 42 | + |
| 43 | +A cast from a base class pointer to a derived class pointer is potentially unsafe: |
| 44 | +``` |
| 45 | +Derived *p = (Derived*)base; |
| 46 | +``` |
| 47 | +If it is obvious that `base` always point at a Derived object the cast is safe and ideally no warning should be reported. |
| 48 | +But otherwise a `dynamic_cast` is safer. |
| 49 | + |
| 50 | +## How to fix |
| 51 | + |
| 52 | +You can use `dynamic_cast` or `static_cast` to fix warnings. |
| 53 | + |
| 54 | +Before: |
| 55 | +``` |
| 56 | +Derived *p = (Derived*)base; |
| 57 | +``` |
| 58 | + |
| 59 | +After: |
| 60 | +``` |
| 61 | +Derived *p = dynamic_cast<Derived*>(base); |
| 62 | +``` |
| 63 | + |
| 64 | +## Enable |
| 65 | + |
| 66 | +--enable=style |
| 67 | + |
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