Casting a character array into an integer

Question

EDIT: The wrong type of num2 has been corrected.

Hello,

I have some character arrays of known size which contains raw integer data read from a binary file.

The size of all these arrays have the size of a integer.

I would like to ask whether the following operation is safe and accurate in ALL normal situation, assuming that the endianness of the raw data and the computer running this code agrees.

char arr1[4] = { ... };
char arr2[2] = { ... };

uint32_t num1 = *static_cast<uint32_t*>(arr1); /* OR num1 = *(uint32_t*)arr1 in C */
uint16_t num2 = *static_cast<uint16_t*>(arr2); /* OR num2 = *(uint32_t*)arr2 in C */

Thank you!

Answer 1

You should use a union.

union charint32 {
    char arr1[4];
    uint32_t num;
};

This will simplify storage and casting for you.

Answer 2

It is technically safe, but there are a few things I would consider:

• Add compile-time asserts to verify the sizes. Are you SURE that your char array equals sizeof(your_int_type)? Your num2 is a great example of why this is important - your typo would cause undefined behavior.
• Consider the alignment. Are you sure that your char array is on a 4-byte boundary (assuming your int is 4 bytes)? PowerPC for example will crash if you try to read an int from an unaligned pointer.