From: Francis Cianfrocca <garbagecat10@...>
Date: 2006-09-23T00:56:04+09:00
Subject: Re: 64-bit integers in network byte-order

On 9/22/06, Francis Cianfrocca <garbagecat10@gmail.com> wrote:
> All,
> does Ruby have a way to convert 64-bit integers to and from network
> order in a platform-independent way?
>
> For 32-bit ints, I can use [value].pack("N"). The conversion operator
> for 64-bit ints ("Q") doesn't have a network-order variant. (I assume
> this is because the underlying byte-order converters (htons/htonl) don't
> have a 64-bit version on 32-bit platforms.)
>

Thanks, guys. I sort of figured I'd have to hack it. Ara, I thought of
your approach (detecting endian-ness locally) but really hoped I could
avoid it! (Ghostbusters: "I feel so funky.")

Combining your approach with Dave's (and passing both through several
additional processing stages), I end up with:

#--------------------------------------
BigEndian = [1].pack("s") == [1].pack("n")

def htonq value
  BigEndian ? val : ([val].pack("Q").reverse.unpack("Q").first)
end
#--------------------------------------

and of course ntohq is identical to htonq.