Type casts

Type casts are a crude mechanism to interpret the bit pattern of an expression as if it would be of another type. Type casts are only needed for low-level programming and are inherently unsafe.

cast[int](x)

The target type of a cast must be a concrete type, for instance, a target type that is a type class (which is non-concrete) would be invalid:

type Foo = int or float
var x = cast[Foo](1) # Error: cannot cast to a non concrete type: 'Foo'

Type casts should not be confused with type conversions, as mentioned in the prior section. Unlike type conversions, a type cast cannot change the underlying bit pattern of the data being casted (aside from that the size of the target type may differ from the source type). Casting resembles type punning in other languages or C++’s reinterpret_cast and bit_cast features.