I'm trying to build a 32-bit float out of its 4 composite bytes. Is there a better (or more portable) way to do this than with the following method? #include <iostream> typedef unsigned char uchar; float bytesToFloat(uchar b0, uchar b1, uchar b2, uchar b3) { float output; *((uchar*)(&output) + 3) = b0; *((uchar*)(&output) + 2) = b1; *((uchar*)(&output) + 1) = b2; *((uchar*)(&output) + 0) = b3; return output; } int main() { std::cout << bytesToFloat(0x3e, 0xaa, 0xaa, 0xab) << std::endl; // 1.0 / 3.0 std::cout << bytesToFloat(0x7f, 0x7f, 0xff, 0xff) << std::endl; // 3.4028234 × 10^38 (max single