64 bit ntohl() in C++?

Documentation: man htobe64 on Linux (glibc >= 2.9) or FreeBSD.

Unfortunately OpenBSD, FreeBSD and glibc (Linux) did not quite work together smoothly to create one (non-kernel-API) libc standard for this, during an attempt in 2009.

Currently, this short bit of preprocessor code:

#if defined(__linux__)
#  include <endian.h>
#elif defined(__FreeBSD__) || defined(__NetBSD__)
#  include <sys/endian.h>
#elif defined(__OpenBSD__)
#  include <sys/types.h>
#  define be16toh(x) betoh16(x)
#  define be32toh(x) betoh32(x)
#  define be64toh(x) betoh64(x)
#endif

(tested on Linux and OpenBSD) should hide the differences. It gives you the Linux/FreeBSD-style macros on those 4 platforms.

Use example:

  #include <stdint.h>    // For 'uint64_t'

  uint64_t  host_int = 123;
  uint64_t  big_endian;

  big_endian = htobe64( host_int );
  host_int = be64toh( big_endian );

It's the most "standard C library"-ish approach available at the moment.

To detect your endian-ness, use the following union:

union {
    unsigned long long ull;
    char c[8];
} x;
x.ull = 0x0123456789abcdef; // may need special suffix for ULL.

Then you can check the contents of x.c[] to detect where each byte went.

To do the conversion, I would use that detection code once to see what endian-ness the platform is using, then write my own function to do the swaps.

You could make it dynamic so that the code will run on any platform (detect once then use a switch inside your conversion code to choose the right conversion) but, if you're only going to be using one platform, I'd just do the detection once in a separate program then code up a simple conversion routine, making sure you document that it only runs (or has been tested) on that platform.

Here's some sample code I whipped up to illustrate it. It's been tested though not in a thorough manner, but should be enough to get you started.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

#define TYP_INIT 0
#define TYP_SMLE 1
#define TYP_BIGE 2

static unsigned long long cvt(unsigned long long src) {
    static int typ = TYP_INIT;
    unsigned char c;
    union {
        unsigned long long ull;
        unsigned char c[8];
    } x;

    if (typ == TYP_INIT) {
        x.ull = 0x01;
        typ = (x.c[7] == 0x01) ? TYP_BIGE : TYP_SMLE;
    }

    if (typ == TYP_SMLE)
        return src;

    x.ull = src;
    c = x.c[0]; x.c[0] = x.c[7]; x.c[7] = c;
    c = x.c[1]; x.c[1] = x.c[6]; x.c[6] = c;
    c = x.c[2]; x.c[2] = x.c[5]; x.c[5] = c;
    c = x.c[3]; x.c[3] = x.c[4]; x.c[4] = c;
    return x.ull;
}

int main (void) {
    unsigned long long ull = 1;
    ull = cvt (ull);
    printf ("%llu\n",ull);
    return 0;
}

Keep in mind that this just checks for pure big/little endian. If you have some weird variant where the bytes are stored in, for example, {5,2,3,1,0,7,6,4} order, cvt() will be a tad more complex. Such an architecture doesn't deserve to exist, but I'm not discounting the lunacy of our friends in the microprocessor industry :-)

Also keep in mind that this is technically undefined behaviour, as you're not supposed to access a union member by any field other than the last one written. It will probably work with most implementations but, for the purist point of view, you should probably just bite the bullet and use macros to define your own routines, something like:

// Assumes 64-bit unsigned long long.
unsigned long long switchOrderFn (unsigned long long in) {
    in  = (in && 0xff00000000000000ULL) >> 56
        | (in && 0x00ff000000000000ULL) >> 40
        | (in && 0x0000ff0000000000ULL) >> 24
        | (in && 0x000000ff00000000ULL) >> 8
        | (in && 0x00000000ff000000ULL) << 8
        | (in && 0x0000000000ff0000ULL) << 24
        | (in && 0x000000000000ff00ULL) << 40
        | (in && 0x00000000000000ffULL) << 56;
    return in;
}
#ifdef ULONG_IS_NET_ORDER
    #define switchOrder(n) (n)
#else
    #define switchOrder(n) switchOrderFn(n)
#endif

some BSD systems has betoh64 which does what you need.

How about:

#define ntohll(x) ( ( (uint64_t)(ntohl( (uint32_t)((x << 32) >> 32) )) << 32) | 
    ntohl( ((uint32_t)(x >> 32)) ) )                                        
#define htonll(x) ntohll(x)

I like the union answer, pretty neat. Typically I just bit shift to convert between little and big endian, although I think the union solution has fewer assignments and may be faster:

//note UINT64_C_LITERAL is a macro that appends the correct prefix
//for the literal on that platform
inline void endianFlip(unsigned long long& Value)
{
   Value=
   ((Value &   UINT64_C_LITERAL(0x00000000000000FF)) << 56) |
   ((Value &   UINT64_C_LITERAL(0x000000000000FF00)) << 40) |
   ((Value &   UINT64_C_LITERAL(0x0000000000FF0000)) << 24) |
   ((Value &   UINT64_C_LITERAL(0x00000000FF000000)) << 8)  |
   ((Value &   UINT64_C_LITERAL(0x000000FF00000000)) >> 8)  | 
   ((Value &   UINT64_C_LITERAL(0x0000FF0000000000)) >> 24) |
   ((Value &   UINT64_C_LITERAL(0x00FF000000000000)) >> 40) |
   ((Value &   UINT64_C_LITERAL(0xFF00000000000000)) >> 56);
}

Then to detect if you even need to do your flip without macro magic, you can do a similiar thing as Pax, where when a short is assigned to 0x0001 it will be 0x0100 on the opposite endian system.

So:

unsigned long long numberToSystemEndian
(
    unsigned long long In, 
    unsigned short SourceEndian
)
{
   if (SourceEndian != 1)
   {
      //from an opposite endian system
      endianFlip(In);
   }
   return In;
}

So to use this, you'd need SourceEndian to be an indicator to communicate the endianness of the input number. This could be stored in the file (if this is a serialization problem), or communicated over the network (if it's a network serialization issue).

An easy way would be to use ntohl on the two parts seperately:

unsigned long long htonll(unsigned long long v) {
    union { unsigned long lv[2]; unsigned long long llv; } u;
    u.lv[0] = htonl(v >> 32);
    u.lv[1] = htonl(v & 0xFFFFFFFFULL);
    return u.llv;
}

unsigned long long ntohll(unsigned long long v) {
    union { unsigned long lv[2]; unsigned long long llv; } u;
    u.llv = v;
    return ((unsigned long long)ntohl(u.lv[0]) << 32) | (unsigned long long)ntohl(u.lv[1]);
}

htonl can be done by below steps

• If its big endian system return the value directly. No need to do any conversion. If its litte endian system, need to do the below conversion.
• Take LSB 32 bit and apply 'htonl' and shift 32 times.
• Take MSB 32 bit (by shifting the uint64_t value 32 times right) and apply 'htonl'
• Now apply bit wise OR for the value received in 2nd and 3rd step.

Similarly for ntohll also

#define HTONLL(x) ((1==htonl(1)) ? (x) : (((uint64_t)htonl((x) & 0xFFFFFFFFUL)) << 32) | htonl((uint32_t)((x) >> 32)))
#define NTOHLL(x) ((1==ntohl(1)) ? (x) : (((uint64_t)ntohl((x) & 0xFFFFFFFFUL)) << 32) | ntohl((uint32_t)((x) >> 32)))

You can delcare above 2 definition as functions also.

union help64
{
    unsigned char byte[8];
    uint64_t quad;
};
uint64_t ntoh64(uint64_t src)
{
    help64 tmp;
    tmp.quad = src;
    uint64_t dst = 0;
    for(int i = 0; i < 8; ++i)
        dst = (dst << 8) + tmp.byte[i];
    return dst;
}