Building a 32-bit float out of its 4 composite bytes

Question

I\'m trying to build a 32-bit float out of its 4 composite bytes. Is there a better (or more portable) way to do this than with the following method?

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Answer 1

The following functions pack/unpack bytes representing a single precision floating point value to/from a buffer in network byte order. Only the pack method needs to take endianness into account since the unpack method explicitly constructs the 32-bit value from the individual bytes by bit shifting them the appropriate amount and then OR-ing them together. These functions are only valid for C/C++ implementations that store a float in 32-bits. This is true for IEEE 754-1985 floating point implementations.

// unpack method for retrieving data in network byte,
//   big endian, order (MSB first)
// increments index i by the number of bytes unpacked
// usage:
//   int i = 0;
//   float x = unpackFloat(&buffer[i], &i);
//   float y = unpackFloat(&buffer[i], &i);
//   float z = unpackFloat(&buffer[i], &i);
float unpackFloat(const void *buf, int *i) {
    const unsigned char *b = (const unsigned char *)buf;
    uint32_t temp = 0;
    *i += 4;
    temp = ((b[0] << 24) |
            (b[1] << 16) |
            (b[2] <<  8) |
             b[3]);
    return *((float *) &temp);
}

// pack method for storing data in network,
//   big endian, byte order (MSB first)
// returns number of bytes packed
// usage:
//   float x, y, z;
//   int i = 0;
//   i += packFloat(&buffer[i], x);
//   i += packFloat(&buffer[i], y);
//   i += packFloat(&buffer[i], z);
int packFloat(void *buf, float x) {
    unsigned char *b = (unsigned char *)buf;
    unsigned char *p = (unsigned char *) &x;
#if defined (_M_IX86) || (defined (CPU_FAMILY) && (CPU_FAMILY == I80X86))
    b[0] = p[3];
    b[1] = p[2];
    b[2] = p[1];
    b[3] = p[0];
#else
    b[0] = p[0];
    b[1] = p[1];
    b[2] = p[2];
    b[3] = p[3];
#endif
    return 4;
}