Type Punning in C and C++

Type punning—interpreting memory as different types—is essential for serialization and low-level access but can cause subtle bugs due to strict aliasing rules. In C, unions and memcpy are safe approaches, while pointer casts are technically undefined behavior that may work at lower optimization levels but silently fail at -O2. C++ is even stricter, treating types as first-class citizens and allowing the compiler to assume different types never overlap, making pointer casts particularly dangerous.