How do I convert a value from host byte order to little endian?

Question

I need to convert a short value from the host byte order to little endian. If the target was big endian, I could use the htons() function, but alas - it's not.

I guess I could do:

swap(htons(val))

But this could potentially cause the bytes to be swapped twice, rendering the result correct but giving me a performance penalty which is not alright in my case.

Answer 1

Here is an article about endianness and how to determine it from IBM:

Writing endian-independent code in C: Don't let endianness "byte" you

It includes an example of how to determine endianness at run time ( which you would only need to do once )

const int i = 1;
#define is_bigendian() ( (*(char*)&i) == 0 )

int main(void) {
    int val;
    char *ptr;
    ptr = (char*) &val;
    val = 0x12345678;
    if (is_bigendian()) {
        printf(“%X.%X.%X.%X\n", u.c[0], u.c[1], u.c[2], u.c[3]);
    } else {
        printf(“%X.%X.%X.%X\n", u.c[3], u.c[2], u.c[1], u.c[0]);
    }
    exit(0);
}

The page also has a section on methods for reversing byte order:

short reverseShort (short s) {
    unsigned char c1, c2;

    if (is_bigendian()) {
        return s;
    } else {
        c1 = s & 255;
        c2 = (s >> 8) & 255;

        return (c1 << 8) + c2;
    }
}

;

short reverseShort (char *c) {
    short s;
    char *p = (char *)&s;

    if (is_bigendian()) {
        p[0] = c[0];
        p[1] = c[1];
    } else {
        p[0] = c[1];
        p[1] = c[0];
    }

    return s;
}

Answer 2

Then you should know your endianness and call htons() conditionally. Actually, not even htons, but just swap bytes conditionally. Compile-time, of course.

Answer 3

Something like the following:

unsigned short swaps( unsigned short val)
{
    return ((val & 0xff) << 8) | ((val & 0xff00) >> 8);
}

/* host to little endian */

#define PLATFORM_IS_BIG_ENDIAN 1
#if PLATFORM_IS_LITTLE_ENDIAN
unsigned short htoles( unsigned short val)
{
    /* no-op on a little endian platform */
    return val;
}
#elif PLATFORM_IS_BIG_ENDIAN
unsigned short htoles( unsigned short val)
{
    /* need to swap bytes on a big endian platform */
    return swaps( val);
}
#else
unsigned short htoles( unsigned short val)
{
    /* the platform hasn't been properly configured for the */
    /* preprocessor to know if it's little or big endian    */

    /* use potentially less-performant, but always works option */

    return swaps( htons(val));
}
#endif

If you have a system that's properly configured (such that the preprocessor knows whether the target id little or big endian) you get an 'optimized' version of htoles(). Otherwise you get the potentially non-optimized version that depends on htons(). In any case, you get something that works.

Nothing too tricky and more or less portable.

Of course, you can further improve the optimization possibilities by implementing this with inline or as macros as you see fit.

You might want to look at something like the "Portable Open Source Harness (POSH)" for an actual implementation that defines the endianness for various compilers. Note, getting to the library requires going though a pseudo-authentication page (though you don't need to register to give any personal details): http://hookatooka.com/poshlib/