Java and Binary Packets, Network Byte Order

[CTIEng2004]

Coming from a C/C++ background, I am still wondering why Java doesn't provide network byte order conversion routines like htonl(), nthol(), htons(), ntohs() etc. Seems like most Java apps I see use ASCII streams. But what if you have to interface w/ a legacy app that uses variable length packets w/ shorts and integers? Now you see my problem.

Writing these functions yourself is doable, but since you have to take into account the processor achitecture (big-endian versus little endian) and the fact they are used so heavily in potential real-time or near real-time scenarios, such routines can actually be fairly tricky and become inefficient.

I am wondering if someone has a very efficient Java routine or set of Java routines that perform network byte order and host byte order conversions?

Thanks

mike_luster@hotmail.com

 

[stefanwagner]

Are you talking of

java.nio.ByteOrder.LITTLE_ENDIAN && java.nio.ByteOrder.LITTLE_ENDIAN

I don't know

htonl(), nthol(), htons(), ntohs()

but I if they're widely used, I would expect them to be findable in Java.
Java.nio (which means: new IO) was introduced in java-1.4.

file:///$JAVA_HOME/docs/api/java/nio/package-summary.html

 

[hologram]

Like Stefan Wagner said, you'll have to take a look at java.nio...
e.g. ByteBuffer --> getShort(), getInt(), getLong(), ...
... the bytes will be marshaled to or from the requested primitive data type according to the current byte-order setting in effect for the buffer.
ByteBuffer has a method order(...) to set the ByteOrder