Philip Warner <pjw@rhyme.com.au> writes:
> It might be good if someone who knows a little more than me about
> endianness etc has a look at the patch - specifically this bit of code:
> #if __BYTE_ORDER == __LITTLE_ENDIAN
Well, the main problem with that is there's no such symbol as
__BYTE_ORDER ...
I'd prefer not to introduce one, either, if we can possibly avoid it.
I know that we have BYTE_ORDER defined in the port header files, but
I think it's quite untrustworthy, since there is no other place in the
main distribution that uses it anymore (AFAICS only contrib/pgcrypto
uses it at all).
The easiest way to write and reassemble an arithmetic value in a
platform-independent order is via shifting. For instance,
// write, LSB firstfor (i = 0; i < sizeof(off_t); i++){ writebyte(val & 0xFF); val >>= 8;}
// read, LSB firstval = 0;shift = 0;for (i = 0; i < sizeof(off_t); i++){ val |= (readbyte() << shift); shift +=
8;}
(This assumes readbyte delivers an unsigned byte, else you might need to
mask it with 0xFF before shifting.)
regards, tom lane
