How do you convert a UnsafeMutablePointer to

Question

The question is really simple, but somehow I don't know how to do it:

How do you convert a UnsafeMutablePointer to UInt8?

I tried converting it like this:

UInt8(theUnsafeMutablePointerVar)

but it gave me the following error: Cannot find an initializer for type 'UInt8' that accepts an argument list of type 'UnsafeMutablePointer'

Answer 1

Use the pointee property in the latest Swift.

Answer 2

You have to convert the pointer to the correct type first (a pointer to UInt8) and then you can access the memory it points to:

let u8 = UnsafePointer<UInt8>(theUnsafeMutablePointerVar).memory

In Swift 3, a void pointer from C is imported to Swift as UnsafeMutableRawPointer, and one can read the pointed-to data with

let u8 = theUnsafeMutablePointerVar.load(as: UInt8.self)