@ -19,47 +19,11 @@ very easily lead to terrible things. However the act of creating the pointer
itself is safe, because actually using a raw pointer is already marked as
`unsafe`.
Here's an exhaustive list of all the true casts. For brevity, we will use `*`
to denote either a `*const` or `*mut`, and `integer` to denote any integral
primitive:
Note that lengths are not adjusted when casting raw slices; `*const [u16] as *const [u8]` creates a slice that only includes half of the original memory.
* `*T as *U` where `T, U: Sized`
* `*T as *U` TODO: explain unsized situation
* `*T as integer`
* `integer as *T`
* `number as number`
* `field-less enum as integer`
* `bool as integer`
* `char as integer`
* `u8 as char`
* `&[T; n] as *const T`
* `fn as *T` where `T: Sized`
* `fn as integer`
Casting is not transitive, that is, even if `e as U1 as U2` is a valid expression, `e as U2` is not necessarily so.
Note that lengths are not adjusted when casting raw slices -
`*const [u16] as *const [u8]` creates a slice that only includes
half of the original memory.
You can find an exhaustive list of [all the true casts][cast list] and [casting semantics][semantics list] on the reference.
Casting is not transitive, that is, even if `e as U1 as U2` is a valid
expression, `e as U2` is not necessarily so.
For numeric casts, there are quite a few cases to consider:
* casting between two integers of the same size (e.g. i32 -> u32) is a no-op
(Rust uses 2's complement for negative values of fixed integers)
* casting from a larger integer to a smaller integer (e.g. u32 -> u8) will
truncate
* casting from a smaller integer to a larger integer (e.g. u8 -> u32) will
* zero-extend if the source is unsigned
* sign-extend if the source is signed
* casting from a float to an integer will round the float towards zero and
produces a "saturating cast" when the float is outside the integer's range
* floats that are too big turn into the largest possible integer
* floats that are too small produce the smallest possible integer
* NaN produces zero
* casting from an integer to float will produce the floating point
representation of the integer, rounded if necessary (rounding to
nearest, ties to even)
* casting from an f32 to an f64 is perfect and lossless
* casting from an f64 to an f32 will produce the closest possible value