Zara wrote:
yes, certainly. Just check if the endiannes is the right one, or if you must caculate the toal the oother way round.
Thank you. I have to add: My example posted was bogus. I just tried to compile and never instantiated the class. When I did I saw that the compiler complained anyways. To make it work I had to use: template<class T> struct packed { unsigned char data[sizeof(T)]; operator T&() { return *reinterpret_cast<T*>(data); } } And then I looked into the standard: 5.2.10 clause 7: A pointer to an object can be explicitly converted to an object of different type. I think this is my case. But of course: .., the result of such a pointer conversion is unspecified. And this I guess is what you meant. So I stick with the latter, explicit code. So the question is left: unsigned char mem[] = {1,2,3,4,5}; struct foo { packed<char> a; packed<int> b; }; How do I map my struct to mem avoiding surprise: foo& f((foo&)(*mem)); I guess this is bad again, as for the very same reasons of unspecified behaviour, true? At least I cannot use a static_cast instead of (foo&) cast. Thanks again Roland aka speedsnail