On 17 September 2014 21:34, Andy Falanga (afalanga) wrote: > Thank you for the reference. I'm going to have to think on this for a bit. I read a bit of the definition for reinterpret_cast in the C++ Draft I have too. I want to figure this out for sure. I think you're barking up the wrong tree if you're trying to understand when reinterpret_cast is suitable ... because it is almost never a good idea! reinterpret_cast basically means "just shut up and do this cast, I know what I'm doing", but that means you've lost the advantages of having the compiler do type checking. The rules Andrew quoted say when it's OK to violate the language's type system. If you try to break those rules you can use reinterpret_cast to make the compiler shut up and do what it's told, but you're still breaking the rules.