Why do you need to cast a variable?

In a general computer programming scenario, there are many data types on the basis of the kind of data they store and the overall visibility of the variables throughout the program modules. Accordingly, there are multiple data types viz. integers, long integers, doubles, strings, characters, as well as variables that are constant, private, friend and global variables. Each data type has its own particular memory requirement, which naturally varies depending upon the nature of values it stores and the domain of its visibility.


In any typical web development project in India, it is but natural for Indian developers to pay attention to the judicious use of memory and achieve optimum efficiency at it. The objective is to use minimum memory.


Also, during web development in India, software professionals need to write stored procedures and SQL queries that need to have variable value in a specific data type only to be run successfully. As a result, programmers use Cast and Convert functions to achieve conversion between data types.


While casting a variable and converting a variable sort of achieves the same result, casting has wider applicability and use than convert. While convert function is limited to SQL, Casting variables pertains to ANSI standard and can be incorporated across various databases, extending more flexibility to the programmers during web and software development.


In fact, casting a variable is a typical feature in most computer programming languages wherein a particular type of variable is reassigned a new variable type so as to facilitate a typical programming situation. As and when a developer implements the feature of casting a variable during web & software development, it is told to the computer to use a different type of variable to store the value of the variable. For example, a software developer may encounter a situation during web and software development; where in a short integer must store a decimal value. Under the circumstances, the programmer would cast the short integer into a long integer data type or a double data type to be able to store values larger than +32,767.