Andrew Talbot Andrew.Talbot@talbotville.com writes:
In general, I have left the casts in where one PVOID-type handle was cast as another, e.g. HMODULE as HANDLE: I wasn't sure if strict typing might (one day) be an issue. AFAIK, my only transgressions were when I removed the casts from the return values of some {Local|Global}Alloc() and family functions, where they, strictly speaking, return a handle, not a literal PVOID, so arguably should be cast. For example:
PSID pSid = (PSID)LocalAlloc(0, cBytes);Since LocalAlloc() returns a HLOCAL - which just happens to be a PVOID - one might argue that the cast should remain. As another example of type-equivalence versus -distinction, DWORD and ULONG are both defined as unsigned long, but I have currently left them as distinct types, too.
I would be glad for feedback on how type-strict we should be, please.
We want to be as type-strict as possible, but that doesn't mean we want explicit typecasts, just the opposite in fact. The only way to benefit from type strictness is to not use casts and let the compiler warn about mismatches. That's also why generic handles like HANDLE or HLOCAL are defined as void*, so that they can be assigned to other types without casting. So typecasts of generic handle types, or of integer types, should all be avoided as far as possible.