reinterpret_cast<> and where can it be used

[Speedo]

So what everybody's said in this thread is allright because the C++ standard allows anything; Whatever you say is fine

The only sensible reaction is to never use reinterpret_cast, at least not if you're aiming for portability.

That would be a bit silly, sense it would mean that it's impossible to do some very basic things in a portable manner - ie it would be impossible to read or write portable binary files, since stream read and write methods only work on char*'s.

I haven't read the book in question, but I suspect that you somewhat misread or misunderstood the statement. I imagine the author's intent was to say that the types of actions that require reinterpret_cast are inherently not portable, unless you're careful.

Edit: Well, it wouldn't be impossible (the binary file thing), but it would require a convoluted method like using a union to be able to get the data as char. I'd say that's considerably worse than reinterpret_cast.