Question

Can I populate a struct by treating it as an array of unsigned char values?

I receive character data over the RS232 UART from a Microcontroller. Using C, how can I deserialize the char Array in my Datatypes uint16_t, uin32_t, int32_t[], …

e.g.

uin16_t StartID = ARRAY[0];
uin16_t EndID = ARRAY[246];

… is there something like this ?
In C# there are effective functions for deserialization but im not that in C

for later

if (StartID == 11)
    printf("good"); 
else 
    printf("bad");

I made this struct to work easier later with the Data. Is there a way to get the Data from my ARRAY[248] into my struct?

typedef struct
{
  //Header 6byte
  uint16_t StartID; // Check if its 1 or in hex 0b
  uint16_t ID;      
  uint16_t LoadID;  

  //Payload 240 byte
  int32_t POS01[3];  
  int32_t POS02[3];
  int32_t POS03[3];
  int32_t POS04[3];
  int32_t POS05[3];
  int32_t POS06[3];
  int32_t POS07[3];
  int32_t POS08[3];
  int32_t POS09[3];
  int32_t POS10[3];
  int32_t POS11[3];
  int32_t POS12[3];
  int32_t POS13[3];
  int32_t POS14[3];
  int32_t POS15[3];
  int32_t POS16[3];
  int32_t POS17[3];
  int32_t POS18[3];
  int32_t POS19[3];
  int32_t POS20[3];

  //End 2byte
  uint16_t EndID; // Check if its 47 or in hex 2F

} DATA_POS; //TOTAL = 248byte

Answer 1

C has a feature called pointers:

uin16_t *StartID = (void*)&ARRAY[0];
uin16_t *EndID = (void*)&ARRAY[246];

Other means to access data under another format include unions:

   union 
   {
      uint32_t *u32;
      uint16_t *u16;
      uint8_t  *u8;
   } u;

As you can see, sometimes features do not need a dedicated function.

Beware however that alignment issues could arise on some platforms because of accessing data in such a way.