> So what it boils down to, is whether casting into a union type is
> legal and portable...
No. You have to use the temporary union variable and assign to one of
its members, as in your second example.
--
Man is the best computer we can | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
put aboard a spacecraft. --Von Braun | {ihnp4,decvax,uunet!mnetor}!utzoo!henry