Portability vs. Endianness

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <829 at saxony.pa.reuter.COM> dgil at pa.reuter.COM (Dave Gillett) writes:
>>	Bytes[0] = (var >> 24) & 0xFF;
>>	Bytes[1] = (var >> 16) & 0xFF;
>>	Bytes[2] = (var >> 8)  & 0xFF;
>>	Bytes[3] =  var        & 0xFF;
>     I don't think that the standard guarantees that chars are eight bits.

It does guarantee that they can hold AT LEAST 8 bits.
Assuming sufficient care is taken with use of unsigned types, etc.,
that is not a problem.
However, as mentioned before, the failure to consider representation
issues for negative values can be a problem, depending on the implementation.