Question

I am using signed to unsigned byte(int8_t) cast to pack byts.

uint32_t(uint8_t(byte)) << n

This works using GCC on Intel Linux. Is that portable for other platforms/compilers, for example PowerPC?
is there a better way to do it? using bitset is not possible in my case.
I am using stdint via boost

Answer 1

If you are using boost/cstdint.hpp from the Boost Integer library, then yes, the typedefs are portable (cross-platform.) The boost/cstdint.hpp header is meant to implement C99 stdint.h functionality in C++.

From the Boost documentation:

The header
provides the typedef’s useful for
writing portable code that requires
certain integer widths. All typedef’s
are in namespace boost.