One 32bit Long into 4 8bit Chars

In C code

I'm gonna ask a stupid question here, but I'm not sure I trust my code so I want to hear if you can tell me what's wrong with my approach

Right now, the code goes

long data

char data0
char data1
char data2
char data3

data0 = data;
data1 = data >> 8;
data2 = data >> 16;
data3 = data >> 24;

but I'm not sure that's the best approach, or even a good approach. It works, which is most important obviously, but I have this nagging feeling that there's something very not Best Practices about this approach and I can't shake that feeling.

>>25
#include "stdio.h"
main(int argc, char**argv, char**envp){
long cat=1;char* vcat=(char*)&cat;
vcat[0]='P';vcat[1]='\x49';vcat[2]=78;vcat[3]='G';
printf("number is:\n %i \nstring*:%s\nchars:%c%c%c%c",cat,vcat,vcat[0],vcat[1],vcat[2],vcat[3]);
}




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