A Bug Hunter's Diary

A.3 Type Conversions in C

The C programming language is quite flexible in handling different data types. For example, in C it’s easy to convert a character array into a signed integer. There are two types of conversion: implicit and explicit. In programming languages like C, implicit type conversion occurs when the compiler automatically converts a variable to a different type. This usually happens when the initial variable type is incompatible with the operation you are trying to perform. Implicit type conversions are also referred to as coercion.

Explicit type conversion, also known as casting, occurs when the programmer explicitly codes the details of the conversion. This is usually done with the cast operator.

Here is an example of an implicit ...