Conversions

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— Merlin, The Coder

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Prerequisites

• W1031 Positive Integers
• W1032 Negative Integers
• W1033 Character Encoding

Introduction

In some cases we have a value of one type but want to use it in another context, as a different type. Depending on language, this may be referred to as "type conversion", "type casting", or "type coercion". Often, type casting refers to the mere re-interpretation of existing bits, while type conversion creates a new representation of data as a different type.

Type Casting

When type casting, we consider an existing bit pattern as other than that originally declared. For example, consider the following C program:

#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
  int c = 65;
  printf("The value is: %i", c);
  printf("The value is: %c", c);
  return 0;
}

We declare an integer variable,

References

• Type Conversion (Wikipedia)
• Type Casting (Swift Documentation)