How to use sprintf

[bearophile]

Steven Schveighoffer:

> D would not allow you to pass a .ptr field of an immutable string, because  
> the type would be immutable(char)* and wouldn't implicitly cast to the  
> required char* argument.  Casting, however, would mask that problem and  
> probably overwrite immutable data (and probably segfault on Linux).   
> Another example of why casting is bad.

Casting is dangerous in general, but it becomes less dangerous when you have some different specialized casts: if you have a cast syntax that only change the const-ness of something (mutable <-> const <-> immutable), and a different syntax (syntax = "any way to express a semantics") to change other aspects of the type, it becomes less easy to cast const-ness away by mistake.

Bye,
bearophile