retrieve bitwise float representation

[Tom K.]

On Jun 10, 8:41 am, Ulrich Eckhardt <eckha... at satorlaser.com> wrote:
> I need to pack a floating point value into a vector of 32-bit unsigned
> values in IEEE format. Further, I maintain a CRC32 checksum for integrity
> checking. For the latter, I actually need the float as integral value.
...
> What I'm wondering is whether there are any better or alternative ways to
> achieve this, the overhead now seems enormous and unnecessary to me here.

Numpy has support for this:

import numpy as np
a = np.arange(10.)   # an array of floats
b = a.view(dtype=np.uint32)

print b
array([         0,          0, 1072693248,          0, 1073741824,
                0, 1074266112,          0, 1074790400,          0,
       1075052544,          0, 1075314688,          0, 1075576832,
                0, 1075838976,          0, 1075970048,          0],
dtype=uint32)

b[0]=5
print a
array([  1.06099790e-313,   1.00000000e+000,   2.00000000e+000,
         3.00000000e+000,   4.00000000e+000,   5.00000000e+000,
         6.00000000e+000,   7.00000000e+000,   8.00000000e+000,
         9.00000000e+000])