How to manage endianess of double from network

Question

I have a BIG problem with the answer to this question Swap bits in c++ for a double

Yet, this question is more or less what I search for: I receive a double from th

Answer 1

Assuming you have a compile-time option to determine endianness:

#if BIG_ENDIAN
template 
void swap_endian(T& pX)
{
   // Don't need to do anything here... 
}
#else
template 
void swap_endian(T& pX)
{
    char& raw = reinterpret_cast(pX);
    std::reverse(&raw, &raw + sizeof(T));
}
#endif

Of course, the other option is to not send double across the network at all - considering that it's not guaranteed to be IEEE-754 compatible - there are machines out there using other floating point formats... Using for example a string would work much better...