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The C Standard allows any object pointer to be cast to and from void *. As a result, it is possible to silently convert from one pointer type to another without the compiler diagnosing the problem by storing or casting a pointer to void * and then storing or casting it to the final type. In this noncompliant code example, loop_function() is passed the char pointer loopchar_ptr but returns an object of type int pointer:

int *loop_function(void *v_pointer) {
  /* ... */
  return v_pointer;
}
 
void func(char *loopchar_ptr) {
  int *int_ptr = loop_function(loopchar_ptr);

  /* ... */
}

This example compiles without warning using GCC 4.8 on Ubuntu Linux 14.04. However, v_pointer can be more strictly aligned than an object of type int *.

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