You're right. Type punning via pointer cast, e.g. int i = ... float f = *(float*) &i; is not fine (violates strict aliasing). Type punning via union, e.g.

You're right. Type punning via pointer cast, e.g. int i = ... float f = *(float*) &i; is not fine (violates strict aliasing). Type punning via union, e.g. union { int i; float f; } u; u.i = ... float f = u.f; is, though (but only in C). Just use memcpy :-)