There&#x27;s this stackoverflow qanswer: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;stackoverflow.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;11373203&#x2F;accessing-inactive-union-member-undefined-behavior" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;stackoverflow.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;11373203&#x2F;accessing-inacti...</a><p>where answers try to distill the standard into something legible by humans. Unsurprisingly, they come to different conclusions.<p>The overall interpretation in some situations, if you look at things just right, you can do type punning in C++. But it&#x27;s pretty risky since you&#x27;re a LOC away from the compiler deleting your function.<p>Or, you can&#x27;t really do it at all safely. Which I would conclude from the above anyways.