Casts: explicit type conversions

Casting refers to explicitly requesting that an expression be converted to a given type. In Chapel, casts are specified by applying the colon operator (:) to an expression, followed by the type into which it should be converted. Note that casts use the same syntax as type specifications in declarations, but occur in execution contexts.

As an example, given the following declarations of a string and an integer:

examples/users-guide/base/casting.chpl

  var myString = "1234";
  var myInt: int;

The following code casts the string to an int, storing it in myInt. It then increments myInt and casts it back to a string, storing it in myString:

  myInt = myString: int;
  myInt = myInt + 1;
  myString = myInt: string;

Of course, casts can also be applied to more complex expressions, so we could have simply written the above as:

  myString = ((myString: int) + 1): string;

In either case, printing out myString results in:

1235