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Well, portable except for `uint8_t` not being guaranteed to exist. =)

Which is a feature! If you use `char` instead of `uint8_t` your program would still compile on a system that doesn't have `uint8_t`, but it is likely to do something entirely unexpected. At least when you use `uint8_t` you are warned at compile-time that your program is broken.

It isn't?

At least that would be a failure at compile-time, rather than run-time.

`uint8_t` cannot exist on any platform with `CHAR_BIT > 8`. Such platforms are non-existent in the mainstream CPU world, but surprisingly common in the DSP world.

And yes, it's a compile-time failure, which is great. My comment should not be read as criticism at all (though I would likely use `uint16_t`, as the OP says the code is intended to work with [presumably aligned] 16-bit words).

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