Portability of binary serialization of double/float type in C++

Question

The C++ standard does not discuss the underlying layout of float and double types, only the range of values they should represent. (This is also true for signed types, is i

Answer 1

Take a look at the (old) gtypes.h file implementation in glib 2 - it includes the following:

#if G_BYTE_ORDER == G_LITTLE_ENDIAN
union _GFloatIEEE754
{
  gfloat v_float;
  struct {
    guint mantissa : 23;
    guint biased_exponent : 8;
    guint sign : 1;
  } mpn;
};
union _GDoubleIEEE754
{
  gdouble v_double;
  struct {
    guint mantissa_low : 32;
    guint mantissa_high : 20;
    guint biased_exponent : 11;
    guint sign : 1;
  } mpn;
};
#elif G_BYTE_ORDER == G_BIG_ENDIAN
union _GFloatIEEE754
{
  gfloat v_float;
  struct {
    guint sign : 1;
    guint biased_exponent : 8;
    guint mantissa : 23;
  } mpn;
};
union _GDoubleIEEE754
{
  gdouble v_double;
  struct {
    guint sign : 1;
    guint biased_exponent : 11;
    guint mantissa_high : 20;
    guint mantissa_low : 32;
  } mpn;
};
#else /* !G_LITTLE_ENDIAN && !G_BIG_ENDIAN */
#error unknown ENDIAN type
#endif /* !G_LITTLE_ENDIAN && !G_BIG_ENDIAN */

glib link