Detecting endianness programmatically in a C++ pro

Question

Is there a programmatic way to detect whether or not you are on a big-endian or little-endian architecture? I need to be able to write code that will execute on an Intel or PPC system and use exactly the same code (i.e. no conditional compilation).

Answer 1

You can use std::endian if you have access to C++20 compiler such as GCC 8+ or Clang 7+:

#include <type_traits>

if constexpr (std::endian::native == std::endian::big)
{
    // Big endian system
}
else if constexpr (std::endian::native == std::endian::little)
{
    // Little endian system
}
else
{
    // Something else
}

Answer 2

union {
    int i;
    char c[sizeof(int)];
} x;
x.i = 1;
if(x.c[0] == 1)
    printf("little-endian\n");
else    printf("big-endian\n");

This is another solution. Similar to Andrew Hare's solution.

Answer 3

You can also do this via the preprocessor using something like boost header file which can be found boost endian

Answer 4

For further details, you may want to check out this codeproject article Basic concepts on Endianness:

How to dynamically test for the Endian type at run time?

As explained in Computer Animation FAQ, you can use the following function to see if your code is running on a Little- or Big-Endian system: Collapse

#define BIG_ENDIAN      0
#define LITTLE_ENDIAN   1

int TestByteOrder()
{
   short int word = 0x0001;
   char *byte = (char *) &word;
   return(byte[0] ? LITTLE_ENDIAN : BIG_ENDIAN);
}

This code assigns the value 0001h to a 16-bit integer. A char pointer is then assigned to point at the first (least-significant) byte of the integer value. If the first byte of the integer is 0x01h, then the system is Little-Endian (the 0x01h is in the lowest, or least-significant, address). If it is 0x00h then the system is Big-Endian.

Answer 5

This is normally done at compile time (specially for performance reason) by using the header files available from the compiler or create your own. On linux you have the header file "/usr/include/endian.h"

Answer 6

I was going through the textbook:Computer System: a programmer's perspective, and there is a problem to determine which endian is this by C program.

I used the feature of the pointer to do that as following:

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void){
    int i=1;
    unsigned char* ii = &i;

    printf("This computer is %s endian.\n", ((ii[0]==1) ? "little" : "big"));
    return 0;
}

As the int takes up 4 bytes, and char takes up only 1 bytes. We could use a char pointer to point to the int with value 1. Thus if the computer is little endian, the char that char pointer points to is with value 1, otherwise, its value should be 0.