is it necessary to type-cast malloc and calloc [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Do I cast the result of malloc?

I was googling to find out the reason for type-casting of malloc and calloc. But, i only found type-casting of malloc is not necessary since it return void pointer but, what about calloc. This is the same reason for calloc too ???

Now, if we move back to first point, about return value of malloc and calloc. Then, i found that, both are returning the allocated spaces. So, i'm little bit confused here. So, my questions are

1. What is the return value of malloc and calloc

2. Is it necessary to type-cast malloc and calloc. And why ?

Answer 1

What is the return value of malloc and calloc?

It is a pointer to void (void*).

Is it necessary to type-cast malloc and calloc. And why ?

No, because the conversion from a pointer to void to a pointer to object is implicit.

C11 (n1570), § 6.3.2.3 Pointers
A pointer to void may be converted to or from a pointer to any object type.

It is right for both malloc and calloc.

Answer 2

malloc()or calloc() returns void * which can be assigned to any pointer type .In C it's not necessary to typecast the void* since it's implicitly done by compiler.But in c++ it will give you error if you won't typecast