Hi, just want to bounce on the "cast your void to a pointer"*, actually you don't need to do that if you don't use an object oriented paradigm à la Java, but go generic full speed and use return by value. No pointers, little or no casting.
As a simple example, suppose I use malloc to allocate memory (because I don't want to allocate with new which would oblige me to handle exceptions and prevent me from handing ownership over to a C client or using an allocator provided by a C client (without extra work)). I have to cast the return value as in
which then works with a standard error checking convention
struct Foo *arr;
err = MallocA(n,&arr);CHK(err);
This doesn't work in C++ without non-portable typeof or evil and less safe (not conforming for function pointers)
*(void**)(p) = malloc((n)*sizeof(**(p)))
Similarly, if a client registers a callback with a context, I store their context in a void* and pass it back to them
int UserCallback(void *ctx,...) {
struct User *user = (struct User*)ctx;
instead of
int UserCallback(void *ctx,...) {
struct User *user = ctx;
I understand that this is just cosmetic. I don't see how "going generic full speed" helps with this. Also note that aggregate returns are slower for all but trivially small structures, and downright bad for big structures.
