4 ms·

I think the original was intentional. If C refuses to let you cast from a non-pointer to a pointer, then it is in fact enforcing some (small) degree of type-saf

• vidarh 12y ago
  The reason I assumed it was not, is that obtaining the bitwise representation of a float is something people actually often ask for (and my variation is not the "right" way to do so). You may be right C does not refuse to let you cast from a non-pointer to a pointer either, though. It just forces you to be slightly more devious in this case: return *(int **)&x; Though I think the implicit conversions that force some of these contortions (e.g. "(int *)(int)x" compiles, but does not return an integer pointer with the address equal to the bit pattern of "x" interpreted as an integer, but the integer portion of the float reinterpreted as a pointer) are more convincing demonstration that C is not typeless in a meaningful way in my opinion, as they also mean identical statements will give different results depending on the types of the variables.
  • vegedor 12y ago
    Well, you are laying of the safety belt there, don't complain afterwards. It make sense to me in some cases, so i won't even argue.