Structures with bitwise data in C++ [duplicate]

Answer 1

That's what a union is for. I hardly ever need to use one, so my syntax may be rusty, but it looks something like this:

union myunion
{
    struct mystruct
    {
       uint16_t Reserved1   :3;
       uint16_t WordErr     :1;
       uint16_t SyncErr     :1;
       uint16_t WordCntErr  :1;
       uint16_t Reserved2   :10;
    };
    uint16_t word;
};

Of course, that adds typing whenever you access it, so you might want to just try a typecast if you only need it occasionally.