[RESOLVED] Validity of new/delete pair (or malloc/free) after pointer casting

[BioPhysEngr]

Pretty much a simple question, but I wanted to confirm what I think I understood from reading elsewhere:

Goal: To allocate some memory as a char*, read in some binary data, re-interpret it as a float* and then free the memory.

My code looks like:

void someFunction(float* &result)
{
    char * tmp = new char[1000];

    //...Fill the char buffer here...

    result = (float*)tmp; //Reinterpret binary data as floats
}

main(void)
{
    float  * floatData;
    someFunction(floatData);

    //Do something

    delete[] (char*)floatData;  //Release the memory
}

Is the cast back to char* necessary on the red line (or could I have validly left it as float*)? Would it be different if I had written char * tmp = (char*)malloc(sizeof(char)*1000); on the blue line (and correspondingly used free (char*)floatData on the red line?

Thanks for any guidance you might have.