Examples of such a weird hardware target include Linux and MacOS, which use LP64: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit_computing#64-bit_data_models https://en.w

Examples of such a weird hardware target include Linux and MacOS, which use LP64: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit_computing#64-bit_data_models https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit_computing#64-bit_data_m... If you use a union, your code won't read or write out of bounds, since it will save space for the larger type. Ideally you would also specify _Float32_t and int32_t for some pseudoportability (at least before endianness gets involved), although I'm aware this was not available in 1999.