Void Pointers in C++

For understanding the concept of void pointers, we should note that we cannot assign the address of one data-type variable to a pointer of another data-type variable. Consider the following:

Note that we can not assign the address of float type variable to a pointer to int as:

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float y; int *p; p = &y;    //illegal statement

Similarly, see the following:

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float *p; int x; p = &x;   //illegal statement

That means, if variable-type and pointer-to-type is same then only we can assign the address of that variable to pointer variable. If both, i.e., the data-type of the variable and the data-type pointed to by the pointer variable, are different then we can not assign the address of variable to pointer variable. But this impossible thing is made possible in C++ by declaring pointer variables as void as follows:

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void *p;

The above pointer is called pointer to void type. That means pointer p can point to any type of data like int,float, etc. For example:

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void *p; int x; float y; p = &x;   //legal statement p = &y;   //legal statement

The above statement are perfectly fine in C++ and they depict the use of void pointers.