I used a few different compilers for C in one project. Ended up at memcpy and byteswaping to get data between different instances of the code correctly (some A

I used a few different compilers for C in one project. Ended up at memcpy and byteswaping to get data between different instances of the code correctly (some ARM, mips, and x86, and each of those can set the byte order). Using a union is possible if it supports packing and the bytes happen to be in the same order and the compiler keeps the struct in the same order. I found that is not true of all compilers, by default. Massively annoyed having to rewrite about 50 file writes/reads that were nice and simple with massive memcpy cascades. Inside the same code on the same compiler you can get away with a lot of things. But port to another arch or try to get bin data out of your program into another (good luck). These days there are realistically 4 compilers people use and they tend to behave mostly the same, also nice libs that do most of this for you. That was the same project I learned not all printf's are created equal. Different CRTs do very different things even in the same compiler family. There is a reason everyone decided to use json and xml to transport data. Because of that mess.