Casting the result of malloc isn't a good idea in C because it can hide the lack of a prototype if you forget to #include <stdlib.h>. It's also a redundant ment

Casting the result of malloc isn't a good idea in C because it can hide the lack of a prototype if you forget to #include <stdlib.h>. It's also a redundant mention of the type name in question, making for more work / noisy diffs under code change. Unfortunately C++ requires the cast.