BYTEORDER(3) Library Functions Manual BYTEORDER(3)

htonl, htons, htonll, ntohl, ntohs, ntohllconvert values between host and network byte order

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

#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);

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).

gethostbyname(3), getservent(3)

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

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

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

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.

June 4, 1993 macOS 15.2