Data serialization in C?

Question

I have this structure which I want to write to a file:

typedef struct
{
    char* egg;
    unsigned long sausage;
    long bacon;
    double spam;
} order;
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Answer 1

If you are using IEEE-754 why not access the float or double as a unsigned short or unsigned long and save the floating point data as a series of bytes, then re-convert the "specialized" unsigned short or unsigned long back to a float or double on the other side of the transmission ... the bit-data would be preserved, so you should end-up with the same floating point number after transmission.