When to use reinterpret_cast?

The C++ standard guarantees the following:

static_casting a pointer to and from void* preserves the address. That is, in the following, a, b and c all point to the same address:

int* a = new int();
void* b = static_cast<void*>(a);
int* c = static_cast<int*>(b);

reinterpret_cast only guarantees that if you cast a pointer to a different type, and then reinterpret_cast it back to the original type, you get the original value. So in the following:

int* a = new int();
void* b = reinterpret_cast<void*>(a);
int* c = reinterpret_cast<int*>(b);

a and c contain the same value, but the value of b is unspecified. (in practice it will typically contain the same address as a and c, but that’s not specified in the standard, and it may not be true on machines with more complex memory systems.)

For casting to and from void*, static_cast should be preferred.