Socket Programming Interview Question:

Explain Routines for converting data between a hosts internal representation and Network Byte Order?

Submitted by: Administrator

Routines for converting data between a host's internal representation and Network Byte Order are:

#include <sys/types.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>

u_long htonl(u_long hostlong);

u_short htons(u_short hostshort);

u_long ntohl(u_long netlong);

u_short ntohs(u_short netshort);

These functions are macros and result in the insertion of conversion source code into the calling program. On little-endian machines the code will change the values around to network byte order. On big-endian machines no code is inserted since none is needed; the functions are defined as null.
Submitted by: Administrator