Union initialization in C++ and C

Question

I have built a working C library, that uses constants, in header files defined as

typedef struct Y {
  union {
    struct bit_field bits;
    uint8_t raw[4];
  }         


        

Answer 1

I decided to choose the following path.

• Do not use .member initialization.
• do nost use static const struct Foobar initialization of members

Instead declare the global variable:

extern "C" {
  extern const struct Foobar foobar;
}

and initialize it in a global section:

struct Foobar foobar = { 0, 0, 0, 0 };

and instead of bugging the C++ compiler with modern ANSI C99 syntax I let the linker do the work be demangling C symbols.