Bumby the Loaf @wallhackio@cat.family

@barquq @lapis what the fuck, i was gonna say this now what do i write

@aescling

@aescling again I return to the statement "reinterpret_cast<T&>(x) is the same thing as *reinterpret_cast<T*>(&x)"

A reinterpret cast to a reference type is equivalent to a dereferenced reinterpret cast of a pointer. It is very explicitly not a pointer.

@aescling again I return to the statement "reinterpret_cast<T&>(x) is the same thing as *reinterpret_cast<T*>(&x)"

A reinterpret cast to a reference type is equivalent to a deferenced reinterpret cast of a pointer. It is very explicitly not a pointer.

@aescling you are right, you can only reinterpret cast to a char pointer or reference. i was mistaken about the existence of reinterpret casts to char

I don't understand how the result is a char pointer. It is not. It is a char reference. References are aliases. They are like macros to the original thing. They aren't a number representing a location in memory. They are another name for the variable itself

@aescling according to this stackexchange answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/5924278/22334683

"reinterpret_cast<T&>(x) is the same thing as *reinterpret_cast<T*>(&x)"

@aescling reinterpret_cast tries not to make a copy of anything. it is looking at the same region of memory but interpreting it differently. that's what it does, that's the whole point

@aescling you are making the rookie mistake of assuming that C++ makes sense

@aescling why not

@aescling reinterpret_casting to char or to char& is the exact same thing except whether or not the result is treated as an lvalue or rvalue.

@aescling the image i drew is what would happen if you casted to char.

in case you didn't know, C++ actually compiles to a set of machine instructions represented as speech bubbles from a cartoon laptop

@aescling

@aescling A reference is treated as an alias to some other preexisting value. A char reference is not a pointer. It is an alias for some preexisting char.

@aescling Yes, the minimum size of of a char is 1 byte. I am fully aware of that.

There is no type in C++ that can be smaller than 1 byte. In fact, every type is some stored as a integral number of bytes. So any type can be reinterpreted as a char string. I don't see what the misconception is here.

@Satsuma Anyway, I learn C++ so that I can hate the language better

@Satsuma i wish i knew more about CSS