How do I handle byte order differences when reading/writing floating-point types in C?

Question

I\'m devising a file format for my application, and I\'d obviously like for it to work on both big-endian and little-endian systems. I\'ve already found working solutions fo

Answer 1

Floating point values use the same byte order as integral values imho. Use an union to overlap them with the respective integral counterpart and use the common hton functions:

float htonf(float x) {
   union foo {
     float f;
     uint32_t i;
   } foo = { .f = x };

   foo.i = htonl(foo.i);
   return foo.f;
}