Explicit Type Conversion: Casting

• Best practice: use implicit type conversion only within one of these two families of native types:

Signed Family = {char, short, int, long, float, double, long double}
Unsigned Family = {unsigned char, unsigned short, unsigned int, unsigned long}

• Otherwise use explicit type conversion using cast operators

/* C casting operators */
c = (char)y;   // cast a copy of the value of y as a char,
               //  and assign to c
x = (int)b;    // cast a copy of the value of b as an int,
               //  and assign to x

/* C++ static cast operator */
c = static_cast<char>(y); 
x = static_cast<int>(b); 

• C++ installations may or may not recognize the C cast operator
• Two other C++ cast operators:
  dynamic_cast<type_name>(expr) and reinterpret_cast<type_name>(expr)