Que? What gives?

When returning void pointers, the top 32 bits are lost? From wikipedia, I guess prototypes are garbled???

Casting and type safety

malloc returns a void pointer (void *), which indicates that it is a pointer to a region of unknown data type. One may "cast" (see type conversion) this pointer to a specific type, as in

int *ptr = (int*)malloc(10 * sizeof (int));

When using C, this is considered bad practice; it is redundant under the C standard. Moreover, putting in a cast may mask failure to include the header stdlib.h, in which the prototype for malloc is found. In the absence of a prototype for malloc, the C compiler will assume that malloc returns an int, and will issue a warning in a context such as the above, provided the error is not masked by a cast. On certain architectures and data models (such as LP64 on 64 bit systems, where long and pointers are 64 bit and int is 32 bit), this error can actually result in undefined behaviour, as the implicitly declared malloc returns a 32 bit value whereas the actually defined function returns a 64 bit value. Depending on calling conventions and memory layout, this may result in stack smashing.

Sillinesssss...