Why cast unused return values to void?

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David’s answer pretty much covers the motivation for this, to explicitly show other “developers” that you know this function returns but you’re explicitly ignoring it.

This is a way to ensure that where necessary error codes are always handled.

I think for C++ this is probably the only place that I prefer to use C-style casts too, since using the full static cast notation just feels like overkill here. Finally, if you’re reviewing a coding standard or writing one, then it’s also a good idea to explicitly state that calls to overloaded operators (not using function call notation) should be exempt from this too:

class A {};
A operator+(A const &, A const &);

int main () {
  A a;
  a + a;                 // Not a problem
  (void)operator+(a,a);  // Using function call notation - so add the cast.

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