Prevent silent cast from false to pointer

Question

I have a function

void foo(int *bar)
{}

Visual Studio 2012 will now happily and without warnings compile if I call foo like this:

int main()
{
  foo(false);
  return 0;
}

If I however change foo(false) to foo(true) than I get an error:

1>main.cpp(132): error C2664: 'foo' : cannot convert parameter 1 from 'bool' to 'int *'
1>          Conversion from integral type to pointer type requires reinterpret_cast, C-style cast or function-style cast

Any idea how I can make sure that I get an error when passing false, too? My only idea is to add a second private function "void foo(bool bar)". Then I indeed get the desired error stating that foo(bool bar) is private. But this only works when foo is called from outside the class and it clutters my interface.

Answer 1

First, as to why it accepts false but not true: The literal false will be interpreted as the integral 0 and a literal 0 will convert to a null pointer of any type. true on the other hand cannot be converted to a pointer type as it converts to an integral 1.

As to how to solve your problem: Your approach with an extra bool overload will work fine for both public and non-public callers as long as you don't implement the private overload. In that case public callers will get a compile error and member callers will get a linker error.

However, you may wish to consider additional things as well.

Does your function need to accept null pointers? If not, change it to accept by reference instead and the problem just goes away.

If your function really does need to accept null pointers then I would suggest in this case to just trust your users to call it correctly instead of cluttering your interface trying to prevent every possible misuse.