Consider the following code fragment, assuming that A
and B
are both trivial types of the same size, say int64_t
and double
, or something similar:
union Punner {
A x;
B y;
};
Punner copy(Punner in)
{
return in;
}
A pun(B in)
{
Punner temp;
temp.y = in;
return copy(temp).x;
}
While I know that the line temp.y = in
starts the lifettime of the y
member of temp
and reading temp.x
would be undefined, when I get a new copy of the Punner
type from the copy
function, should it be assumed that the copy's y
member's lifetime is also already started, and reading the copy's x
member still undefined, or is it simply unspecified, and after obtaining the copy, I may actually read from either the x
or y
freely (in this case reading from x
)?
I know that my question is similar in some ways to this one, but regretfully I was not able to confidently determine a precise answer to my question from the responses to it.
You should think about what is actually happening in the memory.
Punner temp; //data in memory could be anything
temp.y = in; //data contains 8 bytes that describe an integer with the value in
copy(temp); //the copied data is 8 bytes that describe an integer with the value in
copy(temp).x; //accessing those 8 bytes as if they describe a double : getting giberish.