How do I convert between big-endian and little-endian values in C++?

Question

How do I convert between big-endian and little-endian values in C++?

EDIT: For clarity, I have to translate binary data (double-precision floating point values and 32-bit and 64-bit integers) from one CPU architecture to another. This doesn't involve networking, so ntoh() and similar functions won't work here.

EDIT #2: The answer I accepted applies directly to compilers I'm targetting (which is why I chose it). However, there are other very good, more portable answers here.

Answer 1

If you're doing this to transfer data between different platforms look at the ntoh and hton functions.

Answer 2

man 3 swab

Answer 3

We've done this with templates. You could so something like this:

// Specialization for 2-byte types.
template<>
inline void endian_byte_swapper< 2 >(char* dest, char const* src)
{
    // Use bit manipulations instead of accessing individual bytes from memory, much faster.
    ushort* p_dest = reinterpret_cast< ushort* >(dest);
    ushort const* const p_src = reinterpret_cast< ushort const* >(src);
    *p_dest = (*p_src >> 8) | (*p_src << 8);
}

// Specialization for 4-byte types.
template<>
inline void endian_byte_swapper< 4 >(char* dest, char const* src)
{
    // Use bit manipulations instead of accessing individual bytes from memory, much faster.
    uint* p_dest = reinterpret_cast< uint* >(dest);
    uint const* const p_src = reinterpret_cast< uint const* >(src);
    *p_dest = (*p_src >> 24) | ((*p_src & 0x00ff0000) >> 8) | ((*p_src & 0x0000ff00) << 8) | (*p_src << 24);
}

Answer 4

The same way you do in C:

short big = 0xdead;
short little = (((big & 0xff)<<8) | ((big & 0xff00)>>8));

You could also declare a vector of unsigned chars, memcpy the input value into it, reverse the bytes into another vector and memcpy the bytes out, but that'll take orders of magnitude longer than bit-twiddling, especially with 64-bit values.

Answer 5

Look up bit shifting, as this is basically all you need to do to swap from little -> big endian. Then depending on the bit size, you change how you do the bit shifting.

Answer 6

If you're using Visual C++ do the following: You include intrin.h and call the following functions:

For 16 bit numbers:

unsigned short _byteswap_ushort(unsigned short value);

For 32 bit numbers:

unsigned long _byteswap_ulong(unsigned long value);

For 64 bit numbers:

unsigned __int64 _byteswap_uint64(unsigned __int64 value);

8 bit numbers (chars) don't need to be converted.

Also these are only defined for unsigned values they work for signed integers as well.

For floats and doubles it's more difficult as with plain integers as these may or not may be in the host machines byte-order. You can get little-endian floats on big-endian machines and vice versa.

Other compilers have similar intrinsics as well.

In GCC for example you can directly call:

int32_t __builtin_bswap32 (int32_t x)
int64_t __builtin_bswap64 (int64_t x)

(no need to include something). Afaik bits.h declares the same function in a non gcc-centric way as well.

16 bit swap it's just a bit-rotate.

Calling the intrinsics instead of rolling your own gives you the best performance and code density btw..

Answer 7

The procedure for going from big-endian to little-endian is the same as going from little-endian to big-endian.

Here's some example code:

void swapByteOrder(unsigned short& us)
{
    us = (us >> 8) |
         (us << 8);
}

void swapByteOrder(unsigned int& ui)
{
    ui = (ui >> 24) |
         ((ui<<8) && 0x00FF0000) |
         ((ui>>8) && 0x0000FF00) |
         (ui << 24);
}

void swapByteOrder(unsigned long long& ull)
{
    ull = (ull >> 56) |
          ((ull<<40) && 0x00FF000000000000) |
          ((ull<<24) && 0x0000FF0000000000) |
          ((ull<<8) && 0x000000FF00000000) |
          ((ull>>8) && 0x00000000FF000000) |
          ((ull>>24) && 0x0000000000FF0000) |
          ((ull>>40) && 0x000000000000FF00) |
          (ull << 56);
}

Answer 8

On POSIX systems there is the endian.h, which can be determined what encoding your system uses. From there it's something like this:

unsigned int change_endian(unsinged int x)
{
    unsigned char *ptr = (unsigned char *)&x;
    return (ptr[0] << 24) | (ptr[1] << 16) | (ptr[2] << 8) | ptr[3];
}

This swaps the order (from big-endian to little endian):

If you have the number 0xDEADBEEF (on a little endian system stored as 0xEFBEADDE), ptr[0] will be 0xEF, ptr[1] is 0xBE, etc.

But if you want to use it for networking, then htons, htonl and htonll (and their inverse ntohs, ntohl and ntohll) will be helpfull to converting from host order to network order.

Answer 9

There is an assembly instruction called BSWAP that will do the swap for you, extremely fast. You can read about it here.

Visual Studio, or more precisely the Visual C++ runtime library, has platform intrinsics for this, called _byteswap_ushort(), _byteswap_ulong(), and _byteswap_int64(). Similar should exist for other platforms, but I'm not aware of what they would be called.

Answer 10

A possible optimization would be to use a lookup table for the 16bit swapping.

Answer 11

If you are doing this for purposes of network/host compatability you should use:

ntohl() //Network to Host byte order (Long)
htonl() //Host to Network byte order (Long)

ntohs() //Network to Host byte order (Short)
htons() //Host to Network byte order (Short)

If you are doing this for some other reason one of the byte_swap solutions presented here would work just fine.

Answer 12

Here's a generalized version I came up with off the top of my head, for swapping a value in place. The other suggestions would be better if performance is a problem.

 template<typename T>
 ByteSwap(T * p)
 {
     for (int i = 0;  i < sizeof(T)/2;  ++i)
        std::swap(((char *)p)[i], ((char *)p[sizeof(T)-1-i]);
 }

Disclaimer: I haven't tried to compile this or test it yet.

Answer 13

I have this code that allow me to convert from HOST_ENDIAN_ORDER (whatever it is) to LITTLE_ENDIAN_ORDER or BIG_ENDIAN_ORDER. I use a template, so if I try to convert from HOST_ENDIAN_ORDER to LITTLE_ENDIAN_ORDER and they happen to be the same for the machine for wich I compile, no code will be generated.

Here is the code with some comments:

// We define some constant for little, big and host endianess. Here I use 
// BOOST_LITTLE_ENDIAN/BOOST_BIG_ENDIAN to check the host indianess. If you
// don't want to use boost you will have to modify this part a bit.
enum EEndian
{
  LITTLE_ENDIAN_ORDER,
  BIG_ENDIAN_ORDER,
#if defined(BOOST_LITTLE_ENDIAN)
  HOST_ENDIAN_ORDER = LITTLE_ENDIAN_ORDER
#elif defined(BOOST_BIG_ENDIAN)
  HOST_ENDIAN_ORDER = BIG_ENDIAN_ORDER
#else
#error "Impossible de determiner l'indianness du systeme cible."
#endif
};

// this function swap the bytes of values given it's size as a template
// parameter (could sizeof be used?).
template <class T, unsigned int size>
inline T SwapBytes(T value)
{
  union
  {
     T value;
     char bytes[size];
  } in, out;

  in.value = value;

  for (unsigned int i = 0; i < size / 2; ++i)
  {
     out.bytes[i] = in.bytes[size - 1 - i];
     out.bytes[size - 1 - i] = in.bytes[i];
  }

  return out.value;
}

// Here is the function you will use. Again there is two compile-time assertion
// that use the boost librarie. You could probably comment them out, but if you
// do be cautious not to use this function for anything else than integers
// types. This function need to be calles like this :
//
//     int x = someValue;
//     int i = EndianSwapBytes<HOST_ENDIAN_ORDER, BIG_ENDIAN_ORDER>(x);
//
template<EEndian from, EEndian to, class T>
inline T EndianSwapBytes(T value)
{
  // A : La donnée à swapper à une taille de 2, 4 ou 8 octets
  BOOST_STATIC_ASSERT(sizeof(T) == 2 || sizeof(T) == 4 || sizeof(T) == 8);

  // A : La donnée à swapper est d'un type arithmetic
  BOOST_STATIC_ASSERT(boost::is_arithmetic<T>::value);

  // Si from et to sont du même type on ne swap pas.
  if (from == to)
     return value;

  return SwapBytes<T, sizeof(T)>(value);
}

Answer 14

and the Double??? how convert Double from Big-endian and Little-endian in C???

Answer 15

I took a few suggestions from this post and put them together to form this:

#include <boost/type_traits.hpp>
#include <boost/static_assert.hpp>
#include <boost/detail/endian.hpp>
#include <stdexcept>

enum endianness
{
    little_endian,
    big_endian,
    network_endian = big_endian,

    #if defined(BOOST_LITTLE_ENDIAN)
        host_endian = little_endian
    #elif defined(BOOST_BIG_ENDIAN)
        host_endian = big_endian
    #else
        #error "unable to determine system endianness"
    #endif
};

namespace detail {

template<typename T, size_t sz>
struct swap_bytes
{
    inline T operator()(T val)
    {
        throw std::out_of_range("data size");
    }
};

template<typename T>
struct swap_bytes<T, 1>
{
    inline T operator()(T val)
    {
        return val;
    }
};

template<typename T>
struct swap_bytes<T, 2>
{
    inline T operator()(T val)
    {
        return ((((val) >> 8) & 0xff) | (((val) & 0xff) << 8));
    }
};

template<typename T>
struct swap_bytes<T, 4>
{
    inline T operator()(T val)
    {
        return ((((val) & 0xff000000) >> 24) |
                (((val) & 0x00ff0000) >>  8) |
                (((val) & 0x0000ff00) <<  8) |
                (((val) & 0x000000ff) << 24));
    }
};

template<>
struct swap_bytes<float, 4>
{
    inline float operator()(float val)
    {
        uint32_t mem =swap_bytes<uint32_t, sizeof(uint32_t)>()(*(uint32_t*)&val);
        return *(float*)&mem;
    }
};

template<typename T>
struct swap_bytes<T, 8>
{
    inline T operator()(T val)
    {
        return ((((val) & 0xff00000000000000ull) >> 56) |
                (((val) & 0x00ff000000000000ull) >> 40) |
                (((val) & 0x0000ff0000000000ull) >> 24) |
                (((val) & 0x000000ff00000000ull) >> 8 ) |
                (((val) & 0x00000000ff000000ull) << 8 ) |
                (((val) & 0x0000000000ff0000ull) << 24) |
                (((val) & 0x000000000000ff00ull) << 40) |
                (((val) & 0x00000000000000ffull) << 56));
    }
};

template<>
struct swap_bytes<double, 8>
{
    inline double operator()(double val)
    {
        uint64_t mem =swap_bytes<uint64_t, sizeof(uint64_t)>()(*(uint64_t*)&val);
        return *(double*)&mem;
    }
};

template<endianness from, endianness to, class T>
struct do_byte_swap
{
    inline T operator()(T value)
    {
        return swap_bytes<T, sizeof(T)>()(value);
    }
};
// specialisations when attempting to swap to the same endianess
template<class T> struct do_byte_swap<little_endian, little_endian, T> { inline T operator()(T value) { return value; } };
template<class T> struct do_byte_swap<big_endian,    big_endian,    T> { inline T operator()(T value) { return value; } };

} // namespace detail

template<endianness from, endianness to, class T>
inline T byte_swap(T value)
{
    // ensure the data is only 1, 2, 4 or 8 bytes
    BOOST_STATIC_ASSERT(sizeof(T) == 1 || sizeof(T) == 2 || sizeof(T) == 4 || sizeof(T) == 8);
    // ensure we're only swapping arithmetic types
    BOOST_STATIC_ASSERT(boost::is_arithmetic<T>::value);

    return detail::do_byte_swap<from, to, T>()(value);
}