Lpc2000

Hello all,

I have a general programming question. Me and my co-workers had an 
discussion about data alignment and non-aligned accesses. Please 
consider the following situation where an un-aligned access was made 
resulting in wrong value.

char buf[5] = {1,2,3,4,5};    
unsigned short tmp;

tmp = *(unsigned short*)&buf[1];       /* &buf[1] is on a odd address

My co-workers expected that tmp will contain the value0x0203, but the 
value was 0x02. I understand that, because ARM7 core does not support 
un-aligned accesses and the compiler was forced to use a word access on 
a odd address. This code was ported from an 8-bit machine where it was, 
off course, working. My question is if all 32-bit devices would have the 
same problem with this code and why when we tested the same situation on 
a PC using Borland Builder compiler it was working as my co-workers 
expected. Is this a CPU(+cpu bus) issue or it is also compiler dependent.

Although I thing this is bad programming practice and it calls for 
errors I am asking if it is possible to enable a warning for such 
situations.

Regards,
Marko