64 bit ntohl() in C++?

Solution 1:

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.

Solution 2:

I would recommend reading this: http://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/04/byte-order-fallacy.html

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdint.h>
#include <inttypes.h>

uint64_t
ntoh64(const uint64_t *input)
{
    uint64_t rval;
    uint8_t *data = (uint8_t *)&rval;

    data[0] = *input >> 56;
    data[1] = *input >> 48;
    data[2] = *input >> 40;
    data[3] = *input >> 32;
    data[4] = *input >> 24;
    data[5] = *input >> 16;
    data[6] = *input >> 8;
    data[7] = *input >> 0;

    return rval;
}

uint64_t
hton64(const uint64_t *input)
{
    return (ntoh64(input));
}

int
main(void)
{
    uint64_t ull;

    ull = 1;
    printf("%"PRIu64"\n", ull);

    ull = ntoh64(&ull);
    printf("%"PRIu64"\n", ull);

    ull = hton64(&ull);
    printf("%"PRIu64"\n", ull);

    return 0;
}

Will show the following output:

1
72057594037927936
1

You can test this with ntohl() if you drop the upper 4 bytes.

Also You can turn this into a nice templated function in C++ that will work on any size integer:

template <typename T>
static inline T
hton_any(const T &input)
{
    T output(0);
    const std::size_t size = sizeof(input);
    uint8_t *data = reinterpret_cast<uint8_t *>(&output);

    for (std::size_t i = 0; i < size; i++) {
        data[i] = input >> ((size - i - 1) * 8);
    }

    return output;
}

Now your 128 bit safe too!

Solution 3:

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