Is there any "standard" htonl-like function for 64 bits integers in C++?

You are probably looking for bswap_64 I think it is supported pretty much everywhere but I wouldn't call it standard.

You can easily check the endianness by creating an int with a value of 1, casting your int's address as a char* and checking the value of the first byte.

For example:

int num = 42;
if(*(char *)&num == 42)
{
   //Little Endian
}
else
{
   //Big Endian
} 

Knowing this you could also make a simple function that does the swapping.

---

You could also always use boost which contains endian macros which are portable cross platform.

This seems to work in C; did I do anything wrong?

uint64_t htonll(uint64_t value) {
    int num = 42;
    if (*(char *)&num == 42) {
        uint32_t high_part = htonl((uint32_t)(value >> 32));
        uint32_t low_part = htonl((uint32_t)(value & 0xFFFFFFFFLL));
        return (((uint64_t)low_part) << 32) | high_part;
    } else {
        return value;
    }
}

You can try with uint64_t htobe64(uint64_t host_64bits) & uint64_t be64toh(uint64_t big_endian_64bits) for vice-versa.

#define htonll(x) ((1==htonl(1)) ? (x) : ((uint64_t)htonl((x) & 0xFFFFFFFF) << 32) | htonl((x) >> 32))
#define ntohll(x) ((1==ntohl(1)) ? (x) : ((uint64_t)ntohl((x) & 0xFFFFFFFF) << 32) | ntohl((x) >> 32))

The test (1==htonl(1)) simply determines (at runtime sadly) if the hardware architecture requires byte swapping. There aren't any portable ways to determine at compile-time what the architecture is, so we resort to using "htonl", which is as portable as it gets in this situation. If byte-swapping is required, then we swap 32 bits at a time using htonl (remembering to swap the two 32 bit words as well).

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Here's another way to perform the swap that is portable across most compilers and operating systems, including AIX, BSDs, Linux, and Solaris.

#if __BIG_ENDIAN__
# define htonll(x) (x)
# define ntohll(x) (x)
#else
# define htonll(x) (((uint64_t)htonl((x) & 0xFFFFFFFF) << 32) | htonl((x) >> 32))
# define ntohll(x) (((uint64_t)ntohl((x) & 0xFFFFFFFF) << 32) | ntohl((x) >> 32))
#endif

The important part is to use __BIG_ENDIAN__ or __LITTLE_ENDIAN__; and not __BYTE_ORDER__, __ORDER_BIG_ENDIAN__ or __ORDER_LITTLE_ENDIAN__. Some compilers and operating systems lack __BYTE_ORDER__ and friends.