convert big endian to little endian in C [without using provided func]

Question

I need to write a function to convert big endian to little endian in C. I can not use any library function.

Answer 1

for all your bit twiddling needs
http://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html

Answer 2

for 16 bit values

unsigned short wBigE = value;
unsigned short wLittleE = ((wBigE & 0xFF) << 8) | (wBigE >> 8);

for 32 bit values

unsigned int   iBigE = value;
unsigned int   iLittleE = ((iBigE & 0xFF) << 24)
                        | ((iBigE & 0xFF00) << 8)
                        | ((iBigE >> 8) & 0xFF00)
                        | (iBigE >> 24);

This isn't the most efficient solution unless the compiler recognises that this is byte level manipulation and generates byte swapping code. But it doesn't depend on any memory layout tricks and can be turned into a macro pretty easily.

Answer 3

Edit: These are library functions. Following them is the manual way to do it.

I am absolutely stunned by the number of people unaware of __byteswap_ushort, __byteswap_ulong, and __byteswap_uint64. Sure they are Visual C++ specific, but they compile down to some delicious code on x86/IA-64 architectures. :)

Here's an explicit usage of the bswap instruction, pulled from this page. Note that the intrinsic form above will always be faster than this, I only added it to give an answer without a library routine.

uint32 cq_ntohl(uint32 a) {
    __asm{
        mov eax, a;
        bswap eax; 
    }
}

Answer 4

As a joke:

#include <stdio.h>

int main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
    size_t sizeofInt = sizeof (int);
    int i;

    union
    {
        int x;
        char c[sizeof (int)];
    } original, swapped;

    original.x = 0x12345678;

    for (i = 0; i < sizeofInt; i++)
        swapped.c[sizeofInt - i - 1] = original.c[i];

    fprintf (stderr, "%x\n", swapped.x);

    return 0;
}

Answer 5

If you want to change the endianess of a memory block you can use my blazingly fast approach. Your memory array should have a size that is a multiple of 8.

void ChangeMemEndianness(uint64_t *mem, size_t size) 
{
uint64_t m1 = 0xFF00FF00FF00FF00ULL, m2 = m1 >> CHAR_BIT;

size = (size + (sizeof (uint64_t) - 1)) / sizeof (uint64_t);
for(; size; size--, mem++)
  *mem = ((*mem & m1) >> CHAR_BIT) | ((*mem & m2) << CHAR_BIT);
}

This kind of function is useful for changing the endianess of Unicode UCS-2/UTF-16 files.

Answer 6

#include <stdint.h>


//! Byte swap unsigned short
uint16_t swap_uint16( uint16_t val ) 
{
    return (val << 8) | (val >> 8 );
}

//! Byte swap unsigned short
int16_t swap_int16( int16_t val ) 
{
    return (val << 8) | ((val >> 8) & 0xFF);
}

//! Byte swap unsigned int
uint32_t swap_uint32( uint32_t val )
{
    val = ((val << 8) & 0xFF00FF00 ) | ((val >> 8) & 0xFF00FF ); 
    return (val << 16) | (val >> 16);
}

//! Byte swap int
int32_t swap_int32( int32_t val )
{
    val = ((val << 8) & 0xFF00FF00) | ((val >> 8) & 0xFF00FF ); 
    return (val << 16) | ((val >> 16) & 0xFFFF);
}

Answer 7

Will this work / be faster?

uint32_t swapped, result;

((byte*)&swapped)[0] = ((byte*)&result)[3];

((byte*)&swapped)[1] = ((byte*)&result)[2];

((byte*)&swapped)[2] = ((byte*)&result)[1];

((byte*)&swapped)[3] = ((byte*)&result)[0];