Subj : Re: Any help on why?
To   : borland.public.cpp.borlandcpp
From : maeder
Date : Wed Jul 07 2004 10:39 pm

Bob Gonder <notbg@notmindspring.invalid> writes:

> Thomas Maeder [TeamB] wrote:
>
>>X and lX are for integral values. Using them for something else is an even
>>uglier hack than using the *printf() machinery at all.
>
> And you call the below code *Not* ugly?

The ugliness derives from the problem. In contrary to your code, mine is
at least correct.


>>To peek at the internals of, say, a double, the portable way is to
>>treat it as an array of unsigned char, as in
>>
>>double d(3.11415);
>>unsigned char const *const begin(reinterpret_cast<unsigned char *>(&d));
>>unsigned char const *const end(begin + sizeof d);
>>for (unsigned char const *c = begin; c!=end; ++c)
>>  printf("%u ",static_cast<unsigned int>(*c));
>
> Yeah, but you want to use hex. You can't see the bits in 123.

Ok, change %u to %hu.


> My BC++ doesn't support 'reinterpret_cast'  That's some new-age mumbo
> jumbo designed to slow down programmers.

Actually, it was designed to help programmers. The single most important
source of programming errors is incorrect type casts. So let's better
- invent ugly keywords that make us think once more before casting
- make them stand out so that they are easily spotted


> I suppose it's so hard to
> type that it encourages programmers to do *anything* (even use the
> correct types!) to avoid it.

Spot on. You only do it if you absolutely must.


> Not to mention, the OP's code was C not C++ to begin with.

Irrelevant.

.