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From: jfw@ksr.com (John F. Woods)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Portability vs. Endianness
Message-ID: <2670@ksr.com>
Date: 13 Mar 91 19:41:55 GMT
References: <1991Mar12.105451.19488@dit.upm.es> <2628@ksr.com> <15457@smoke.brl.mil> <2669@ksr.com>
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jfw@ksr.com (John F. Woods) writes:
>[One more time, this time with an open copy of ANSI C]
Now, opening the FIRST chapter, ...

>Further hmm.  Is memcpy() obliged to do anything sensible if handed
>a pointer to an integer cast to a void *?

Yes.  Courtesy of section 1.6 and explained by some handwaving in the
Rationale, all C objects can be addressed as arrays of characters.
Of course, on a 1s-complement machine, the characters you find in a long
will NOT be the same characters you would find on a 2s-complement machine,
so as long as the declaration of 'var' in the original stays just 'long',
then memcpy() isn't the right answer.