Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!saxony!dgil
From: dgil@pa.reuter.COM (Dave Gillett)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Portability vs. Endianness
Message-ID: <829@saxony.pa.reuter.COM>
Date: 18 Mar 91 23:12:35 GMT
References: <1991Mar12.105451.19488@dit.upm.es> <2628@ksr.com>
Distribution: na
Organization: Reuter:file Inc  (A Reuter Company) Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 17

In <2628@ksr.com> jfw@ksr.com (John F. Woods) writes:

>	Bytes[0] = (var >> 24) & 0xFF;
>	Bytes[1] = (var >> 16) & 0xFF;
>	Bytes[2] = (var >> 8)  & 0xFF;
>	Bytes[3] =  var        & 0xFF;

>This code is guaranteed.


     I don't think that the standard guarantees that chars are eight bits.
I will agree that that's probably even more common than 4-byte longs, but
even this assumption about word sizes cannot, IMHO, be guaranteed to be
portable.  (6-bit and 9-bit chars have gone out of style, but I've used
machines with 16-bit word sizes that would *not* have produced the desired
result for this code.)
                                                 Dave