byteorder(3)

byteorder3

Convert values between host and network byte order

Usage

#include <arpa/inet.h>

uint64_t

htonll(uint64_t hostlonglong);

uint32_t

htonl(uint32_t hostlong);

uint16_t

htons(uint16_t hostshort);

uint64_t

ntohll(uint64_t netlonglong);

uint32_t

ntohl(uint32_t netlong);

uint16_t

ntohs(uint16_t netshort);

Library

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

Overview

These routines convert 16 bit, 32 bit, and 64 bit quantities between network byte order and host byte order. (Network byte order is big endian, or most significant byte first.) On machines which have a byte order which is the same as the network order, routines are defined as null macros.

These routines are most often used in conjunction with Internet addresses and ports as returned by gethostbyname(3) and getservent(3).

Releases

163 releases since Mac OS X 10.0; the text changed 3 times.

  1. 10.0–10.1.5
  2. 10.2–10.4.11
  3. 10.5–10.15.6
  4. 11.0.1–26.5

Standards

The byteorder functions except htonll and ntohll are expected to conform with IEEE Std POSIX.1-200x (“POSIX.1”)

History

The functions htonl, htons, ntohl, ntohs appeared in 4.2BSD.

The functions htonll and ntohll first appeared in OS X 10.10 (Yosemite).

Bugs

On the VAX bytes are handled backwards from most everyone else in the world. This is not expected to be fixed in the near future.

From Libc 1752.120.2 in macOS 26.5. Parsed by carta from the page's mdoc source.