Re: pointer casts(newbie)

If you cast it to a character type, you can access the
individual bytes. Modifying them will result in undefined
behavior if you later try to use the object with its
original type, but something like:

    template< typename T >
    void
    dump(
        std::ostream& dest,
        T const& obj )
    {
        IOSave saver( dest ) ;
        dest.setf( std::ios::hex, std::ios::basefield ) ;
        dest.fill( '0' ) ;
        unsigned char const*current
            = reinterpret_cast< unsigned char const* >( &obj ) ;
        unsigned char const*end = current + sizeof( T ) ;
        while ( current != end ) {
            dest << std::setw( 2 ) << *current ;
            ++ current ;
            if ( current != end ) {
                dest << ' ' ;
            }
        }
    }

is sometimes useful (and has fully defined behavior).