Swapping byte order, aka Big endian?

Hello, hope someone can help me. I was wondering if there was an easy, portable way(I know I'm asking alot) to switch the byte order of an integer. From what I've found so far, I can use some functions in winsock2.h, but I can't seem to link it, and it isn't very portable anyways.

In case I'm being a little unclear, here's what i mean:

I have an int that outputs to a file as (in hex) A0 13 00 00, but I need it to output as 00 00 13 A0.

Thanks in advance.

What's wrong with ntohl?

Which header would I have to include for that? Sorry if it's obvious.

EDIT
I suppose it would help to know that I'm on windows.

Oh, looks like I had forgotten to add -lws2_32 to my linker. I managed to get Winsock.h to work, and ntohl did the trick. Thanks very much for the help.

When in doubt, consult the documentation:

ntohl Function (Windows)

Careful with ntohl(). First off, as you note, it's not portable (it exists on unix systems, but of course not in winsock2.h). Second, it won't do any swapping if the native system is big endian: it converts network byte-order (big endian) to host byte-order (which could also be big endian).

If you want to swap a four-byte integer in all cases, just write your own swap function; it's easy enough to do. If you do only want to swap if the native system is little endian, ntohl() is probably the best method, but you'll have to deal with the whole portability issue.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cas

Careful with ntohl(). First off, as you note, it's not portable (it exists on unix systems, but of course not in winsock2.h).

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Yep... it's in winsock as well. You will probably need to add ws2_32.lib or ws2_64 to your linker's list.

Quote:

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If you want to swap a four-byte integer in all cases, just write your own swap function; it's easy enough to do. If you do only want to swap if the native system is little endian, ntohl() is probably the best method, but you'll have to deal with the whole portability issue.

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I agree he should probably write his own, unless he's doing sockets programming....

Here is something that should be portable:

Code:

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        unsigned long int m, n;

        ...

        m =  (n & 0xff000000) >> 24;
        m |= (n & 0x00ff0000) >> 8;
        m |= (n & 0x0000ff00) << 8;
        m |= (n & 0x000000ff) << 24;

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