In article <4205 at rwthinf.UUCP> berg at marvin.e17.physik.tu-muenchen.de (Stephen R. van den Berg) writes: >No, not needed, the cast is implicit. No, without the cast you have violated a constraint in the C standard (section 3.3.16.1 in ANS X3.159-1989) and a standard-conforming implementation is obliged to produce a diagnostic.