How to convert long double to char[12]?

Question

Given long double, I need to serialize it to char[12] (optimally) and deserialize. Is it even possible?

Answer 1

From what I understand of your question, I would do:

double in=2.132;
char arr[12] = {};
memcpy(arr,&in,sizeof(in));

char arr2[12] = ...;
double out;
memcpy(&out,arr2,sizeof(out));

assuming endianness and size of double are the same on both sides of the de/serialization.