Byte Order Swapping Function

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 7/15/11 4:23 PM, Christian Manning wrote:
> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>
>> On 7/14/11 5:51 AM, Regan Heath wrote:
>>> That's my point. I need 8/16/32/64/128 bit versions and it really would
>>> be better if there were general variants. My version are less than
>>> optimal, but do use intrinsics where possible. Someone else can do a far
>>> better job than I, and it really should be done once, by that person.
>>> Surely we have the infrastructure for someone to add this to phobos? If
>>> something this simple can't or won't be done, what hope do we have!?
>>
>> I think we should have these functions in std.bitmanip:
>>
>> T toBigEndian(T)(T val) if (isArithmetic!T || isSomeChar!T);
>> T toLittleEndian(T)(T val) if (isArithmetic!T || isSomeChar!T);
>> T bigEndianToNative(T)(T val) if (isArithmetic!T || isSomeChar!T);
>> T littleEndianToNative(T)(T val) if (isArithmetic!T || isSomeChar!T);
>>
>> That means all characters, all integers, and all floating point numbers.
>> The implementations would opportunistically use intrinsics and other
>> specialized means.
>>
>> The documentation should specify the relationship to htonl and ntohl.
>>
>> If there's a need for converting endianness of larger buffers, we might
>> add:
>>
>> ubyte[] toBigEndian(ubyte[] val);
>> ubyte[] toLittleEndian(ubyte[] val);
>> ubyte[] bigEndianToNative(ubyte[] val);
>> ubyte[] littleEndianToNative(ubyte[] val);
>>
>> They'd use std.algorithm.reverse internally as needed.
>>
>> It's a sweet piece of work. Anyone have the time to prepare a pull
>> request?
>>
>>
>> Andrei
>
> Am I being naïve in thinking I can just do this:
> alias littleEndianToNative toLittleEndian;
> alias bigEndianToNative toBigEndian;
> ?
>
> Chris

On a little endian machine, yes :o).

Andrei