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c++castingportabilityunsignedsigned

portable signed/unsigned byte cast,C++

I am using signed to unsigned byte(int8_t) cast to pack byts.

uint32_t(uint8_t(byte)) << n

This works using GCC on Intel Linux. Is that portable for other platforms/compilers, for example PowerPC? is there a better way to do it? using bitset is not possible in my case. I am using stdint via boost

Solution

  • If you are using boost/cstdint.hpp from the Boost Integer library, then yes, the typedefs are portable (cross-platform.) The boost/cstdint.hpp header is meant to implement C99 stdint.h functionality in C++.

    From the Boost documentation:

    The header provides the typedef's useful for writing portable code that requires certain integer widths. All typedef's are in namespace boost.