Objective C BitConverter Equivalent

Question

Hi there, I'm wondering if there is an Objective C equivalent to .Net's BitConverter.GetBytes() method.

For example, in C#, I can write something like this:

byte[] lengthPrefix = BitConverter.GetBytes(message.length);

What would the equivalent be in Objective C?

Some example code would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Sin Objective-C is C in its roots, you can use bitwise operators to accomplish something similar.

There is nothing on the COCOA/COCOA-TOUCH framework that will do that automatically for you (like's .NET's BitConverter).

Answer 2

If you don't need a specific endian-ness:

unsigned char * lengthPrefix = (unsigned char *)&message.length;

Or, copy to a 32-bit buffer, if needed.

unsigned char lengthPrefixBuffer[4];
memcpy(lengthPrefixBuffer, &message.length, 4);