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From: tim@maths.tcd.ie (Timothy Murphy)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Casting pointers
Summary: Can a char* always be cast as an int*
Keywords: Pointers, casting
Message-ID: <1990Sep29.201144.23113@maths.tcd.ie>
Date: 29 Sep 90 20:11:44 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Maths, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
Lines: 25

I recently came across the following problem,
when temporarily 'borrowing' od from Unix to Mac.
Consider a program like this.

#include <stdio.h>

char *buf = "abc";

main()
{
  int *n = (int*) buf;
  printf("%d", *n);
}

Should this always work?
On the Mac, with THINK C,
it only works if buf has an even address.
Otherwise it bombs out.
Is that a bug, according to standard C?

-- 

Timothy Murphy  

e-mail: tim@maths.tcd.ie