I have the following code: #include <iostream> char ch[] = "abcd"; int main() { std::cout << (long)(int*)(ch+0) << ' ' << (long)(int*)(ch+1) << ' ' << (long)(int*)(ch+2) << ' ' << (long)(int*)(ch+3) << std::endl; std::cout << *(int*)(ch+0) << ' ' << *(int*)(ch+1) << ' ' << *(int*)(ch+2) << ' ' << *(int*)(ch+3) << std::endl; std::cout << int('abcd') << ' ' << int('bcd') << ' ' << int('cd') << ' ' << int('d') << std::endl; } My question is why the pointer of 'd' is 100 ? I think it should be: int('d') << 24; //plus some trash on stack after ch And the question is why the second and the third line of the stdout are different ? 6295640 6295641 6295642 6295643 1684234849 6579042 25699 100 1633837924 6447972 25444 100 Thanks.