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That's the fun! Make a change and watch it break and fix the break is the only way to understand ancient code.
#SupportHeForShe
Government can give you nothing but what it takes from somebody else. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you've got, including your freedom.-Ezra Taft Benson
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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"Make a change and watch it break and fix the break is the only way to understand ancient code."
While looking for a new job!
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Well, I didn't say put it in production. But haha, that is a potentiality.
#SupportHeForShe
Government can give you nothing but what it takes from somebody else. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you've got, including your freedom.-Ezra Taft Benson
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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That looks like a documentation trick to me. "I don't care what the heck is on the other side of the pointer". What was the max dereference level in the actual usage? A single level?
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Such a right-thinking person. 
Are you implying that there are languages that don't allow this, and force you to serialize using JSON or some other drool?! 
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something like that, yes. 
Real programmers use butterflies
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Program: Shoot in foot
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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The one about Forth is right on the mark.
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The C++ one is even more accurate when pointers are involved !
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I see no danger. Better than some other techniques.
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C# has been improving a lot in that area. You can take a Span of various types (some mostly-reasonable restrictions apply) and use MemoryMarshal.AsBytes on it to view it has a Span<byte>, then stash it in a file or whatever. It's nice.
Actually paradoxically it's nicer than in C, because in C# you can actually control the layout of fields to whatever degree you need, so you can use this for file headers that have "unaligned" fields. C# is a better low level language than C.
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Does it mandate the endianism and take the hit on non-compliant platforms, or is it still a problem for intersystem messages?
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Unfortunately it's always in the native endianness, with no way to control it. An attribute for that is on my wishlist.
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The proprietary language in which I worked for many years standardized its endianism and took the hit, so intersystem messaging was easy. It was designed when memory was precious--unlike today  --so it was easy to control packing. For example, a bool was a single bit, and an enum could be packed into the fewest bits needed for its enumerators (negative values not allowed). We would only pad a field when performance was critical.
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Hopefully people will come to their senses and switch from C# to Java, just saying.
~d~
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Sure, and then they can't do any of this. No structs, no spans, no layout control.
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why would I want to take a giant leap backwards?
#SupportHeForShe
Government can give you nothing but what it takes from somebody else. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you've got, including your freedom.-Ezra Taft Benson
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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Exceptionally useful - you can do a cheap encryption by clever casting - or even more convenient, what might be considered an alias for casting: union
And if one so chooses, passing ones data through a logical cuisinart is always appropriate.
If you wish great power you must take great responsibility. As always.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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I use unions sometimes, but i only needed the cast in two places in the code that inspired this post, and it was all it was ever going to need.
Real programmers use butterflies
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I really liked being able to cast nearly anything to anything.
For a cheap and easy (and not too secure) 'encryption' I'd just do something like:
union {
char * readable;
ulong * notSoMuch;
}and then you can trivially make a string unreadable by storing the int array in a text file (lots of options there, too, spaced or other-delimiters? left-zero-filled?
Decryption is obvious - and really no overhead as all - I always though of it as the string and its encrypted version coexisting in different planes of their little universe.
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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I use the union technique for that in both C(++) and C#. I don't *always* use it in the former just because i hate declaring new types for one or two lines of code where it will be used.
i don't really believe in security by obscurity in most cases, but it may be useful for shrouding source code.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Yes to all of that. Elegant and concise. C++ is much more type safe, and yet it became heavy: hard to read and often very hard to write, a bit constrictive.
C is absolute freedom, total power... and requires total responsibility.
GCS d--(d+) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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den2k88 wrote: C++ is ... hard to read and often very hard to write
Am I using it wrong, because I've never had these problems?
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Funny, I was thinking the same things. But then again, I've encountered code like the OP described. Usually written by electrical engineers.
#SupportHeForShe
Government can give you nothing but what it takes from somebody else. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you've got, including your freedom.-Ezra Taft Benson
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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