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From: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Portability vs. Endianness
Message-ID: <15521@smoke.brl.mil>
Date: 20 Mar 91 21:09:49 GMT
References: <1991Mar12.105451.19488@dit.upm.es> <2628@ksr.com> <829@saxony.pa.reuter.COM>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 12

In article <829@saxony.pa.reuter.COM> dgil@pa.reuter.COM (Dave Gillett) writes:
>>	Bytes[0] = (var >> 24) & 0xFF;
>>	Bytes[1] = (var >> 16) & 0xFF;
>>	Bytes[2] = (var >> 8)  & 0xFF;
>>	Bytes[3] =  var        & 0xFF;
>     I don't think that the standard guarantees that chars are eight bits.

It does guarantee that they can hold AT LEAST 8 bits.
Assuming sufficient care is taken with use of unsigned types, etc.,
that is not a problem.
However, as mentioned before, the failure to consider representation
issues for negative values can be a problem, depending on the implementation.