Getting the IEEE Single-precision bits for a float

Question

I need to write an IEEE single-precision floating point number to a 32-bit hardware register at a particular address. To do that, I need to convert a variable of type float

Answer 1

If you're trying to simply display the integral value of the float as it's stored in memory, then try using a union:

union {
    float a;
    unsigned int target;
} u;

Store the float value:

u.a = 2.39;

Print both float and integer values:

printf ("a = %f\n", u.a);
printf ("target = %08X\n", u.target); /* you could use %u to show decimal */

No compiler warnings. I use GNU compiler (gcc) on Linux. Notice that target is not a pointer; this is the beauty (and hideousness) of unions. ;-)