What conversion happens when we use "while" in C++?

Question

I'm using the Microsoft documentation and cppreference as background. Microsoft's site says that the expression to be evaluated in while must be an integral type, a pointer type or some conversible to these. Cppreference's site although says that while expects a bool type expression.

What does really happen? The expression will be converted to bool or not necessarly?If I use, for example, a char type expression inside a while, wont it be necessary to be converted to bool?

Answer 1

According for example to the C++ 14 Standard (6.4 Selection statements)

2 The rules for conditions apply both to selection-statements and to the for and while statements

4. ...The value of a condition that is an expression is the value of the expression, contextually converted to bool for statements other than switch; if that conversion is ill-formed, the program is ill-formed.

Here is a demonstrative program.

#include <iostream>

struct A
{
    operator int() const { return 1; };
};

int main() 
{
    A a;

    while ( a ) break;
    
    return 0;
}

At first the object a is converted to the type int using the user defined conversion operator

operator int() const { return 1; };

After that there is applied the standard conversion from the type int to the type bool.

From the C++ 14 Standard (4 Standard conversions)

7 [ Note: For class types, user-defined conversions are considered as well; see 12.3. In general, an implicit conversion sequence (13.3.3.1) consists of a standard conversion sequence followed by a user-defined conversion followed by another standard conversion sequence. — end note ]