c - int to char casting

Question

int i = 259;       /* 03010000 in Little Endian ; 00000103 in Big Endian */
char c = (char)i;  /* returns 03 in both Little and Big Endian?? */

In my computer it assigns 03 to char c and I have Little Endian, but I don't know if the char casting reads the least significant byte or reads the byte pointed by the i variable.

Answer 1

Endianness doesn't actually change anything here. It doesn't try to store one of the bytes (MSB, LSB etc).

• If char is unsigned it will wrap around. Assuming 8-bit char 259 % 256 = 3
• If char is signed the result is implementation defined. Thank you pmg: 6.3.1.3/3 in the C99 Standard