Casting int pointer to char pointer causes loss of data in C?

Question

I have the following piece of code:

#include 
#include 
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  int n = 260; 
  int *p = &n;
         


        

Answer 1

I understood what exactly happens by changing value:

#include 
#include 

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  int n = 260; 
  int *p = &n;
  char *pp = (char*)p;
  *pp = 20;

    printf("pp = %d\n", (int)*pp);
  printf("n = %d\n", (int)n);
  system("PAUSE");  
  return 0;
}

The output value are 20 and 276

So basically the problem is not that you have data loss, is that the char pointer points only to the first byte of the int and so it changes only that, the other bytes are not changed and that's why those weird value (if you are on an INTEL processor the first byte is the least significant, that's why you change the "smallest" part of the number