Martin Bonner wrote:
I'm not sure I'm a pedantic language lawyer, but the standard says "In a union, at most one of the data members can be active at any time". It is quite clear that experts in CLC++M regard John Maddock's version of setbits and getbits as undefined behaviour. In general, I would regard using undefined behaviour as unacceptable for a boost library. The floating point utilities are different, they pretty much /have/ to use undefined behaviour. They also seem to be taking the correct approach of using #ifdef, and testing on as many platforms as possible (I haven't reviewed them yet).
On the other hand, even if floating point utilities have to go through a minefield, there doesn't seem any point in wandering around more than necessary. Particularly if the tested compilers don't actually generate better code for the undefined behaviour version!
Indeed, suggestion withdrawn! :-) It all goes to show why I don't normally mess about at such a low level :-( John.