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Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 12:53:32 -0400
From: Frank Peters <frank.peters@comcast.net>
To: gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org
Subject: Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: GCC-4.5.2 Has Serious Problems
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On Fri, 01 Jul 2011 14:53:45 +0300
Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@arcor.de> wrote:

> 
> You can alias them with a char* (a char pointer can alias everything in 
> a valid and defined manner).  What you do is use the char* to scan over 
> the target type.  And since a char is always guaranteed to be 8 bits, 
> it's very suited for doing endian conversions.
> 

Yes, that's true, but in my case another concern was having data
that is more easily human readable.  A text file full of single-byte
data is harder to read than a file with full 64 or 32 bit strings.

For endian conversions, though, the char pointer is recommended.

But with the availability of the "-fno-strict-aliasing" option it
doesn't seem to matter which method is chosen.