C job interview - casting and comparing

Question

I was confronted with a tricky (IMO) question. I needed to compare two MAC addresses, in the most efficient manner.

The only thought that crossed my mind in that moment

Answer 1

To do type punning correctly you have to use an union. Otherwise you will break the rules strict aliasing which certain compilers follow, and the result will be undefined.

int EqualMac( MAC* a , MAC* b )
{
    union
    {
        MAC m ;
        uint16_t w[3] ;

    } ua , ub ;

    ua.m = *a ;
    ub.m = *b ;

    if( ua.w[0] != ub.w[0] )  
        return 0 ;

    if( ua.w[1] != ub.w[1] )
        return 0 ;

    if( ua.w[2] != ub.w[2] )
        return 0 ;

return 1 ;
}

According to C99 it is safe to read from an union member that is not the last used to store a value in it.

If the member used to read 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.