[KerrAvon]

I disagree with that advice, FWIW -- (void *) is the cause of a lot of bugs in C programs, and much stricter type checking was often the norm for compilers like CodeWarrior on platforms like classic Mac OS, where (a) if you got something wrong you'd corrupt app memory at best and the filesystem at worst and (b) many developers were used to Pascal, which was stricter. (Moving to GCC on Mac OS X and unexpectedly getting much more lenient type checking was a big surprise.)

[cataphract]

It doesn't make it any safer because the cast is unchecked. It could be argued it's discouraged[1] for a reason that doesn't really apply to modern C versions where implicit-int isn't allowed anymore.

But while the cast is a matter of style (or C++ compatibility), sizeof(*ret) is definitely superior to sizeof(thing_t). The reason is that people sometimes change the type of ret but forget the change the size of the allocation, especially if ret is assigned to on a different line it's declared.

[1]: https://c-faq.com/malloc/mallocnocast.html

[munch117]

But adding the cast doesn't make type checking stricter, quite the opposite - it destroys any hope of the compiler checking the assignment.

C++ shot itself in the foot by removing automatic conversion from void* to T*, because it forces programmers to add casts that weaken type safety.