Can I just cast it instead of converting it? Or is that semantically different?What exactly do you want to get in result?
Same bitwise representation 10100101 stays the same 10100101 in memory? Or do you need to cast values 123 == 123.0f. In first case you cast as pointer (reinterpret_cast in C++), in second case you do "regular" cast (static_cast in C++).