[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] AAC: type puns for 16 bit floating point rounding

[Dave Dodge]

On Fri, Dec 05, 2008 at 12:16:44AM +0000, M?ns Rullg?rd wrote:
> The effects of violating the aliasing rules are *undefined*.
> Implementations are not required to document their behaviour, nor need
> the behaviour be consistent.

Just FYI, type punning through a union appears to be a documented and
supported operation in C99 TC3 (published in November 2007).  And
since the documentation is in an explanatory footnote rather than a
change to the normative text, it suggests that it was required to work
as of TC2 or even before.  From TC3:

    15. Page 073, 6.5.2.3
    Attach a new footnote to the words "named member" in paragraph 3:

    'If the member used to access the contents of a union object is
    not the same as the member last used to store a value in the
    object, the appropriate part of the object representation of the
    value is reinterpreted as an object representation in the new type
    as described in 6.2.6 (a process sometimes called "type punning").
    This might be a trap representation.'

If the member that was stored does not completely overlap the member
being fetched, the extra bytes have unspecified values.  That comes as
a result of some normative changes in TC2.

                                                  -Dave Dodge