Question

I’m reading in two 32 bit registers and trying to put it inside a string buffer using the following:

sprintf (buffer, "%s-%s", ((char*)(in32(REGISTER1))) , (char*)(in32(REGISTER2)));

Can the hex value read in from the registers not be typecast as a pointer to a char and be printed into the buffer as above?

Answer 1

As craig65535 implies in a comment above, the problem is most likely with this phrase:

the hex value read in from the registers

I doubt that you’re reading in a hex value; rather, you’re reading in an integer. If you want to store a hex representation of that integer in a string, you’d use the %X format specifier:

sprintf (buffer, "%08X-%08X", in32(REGISTER1), in32(REGISTER2));

(The 8 means “use a width of eight characters”; the 0 means “left-pad with zeroes if the value is such that the width is less than eight”.)

The only way you could validly cast to char * is if the integer value in the register is actually a pointer to some memory location where you’ve stored a string; but that is clearly not the case here.