Any way to read big endian data with little endian program?

Question

An external group provides me with a file written on a Big Endian machine, and they also provide a C++ parser for the file format.

I only can run the parser on a lit

Answer 1

Try persuading the parser team to include the following code:

int getInt(char* bytes, int num)
{
    int ret;
    assert(num == 4);
    ret = bytes[0] << 24;
    ret |= bytes[1] << 16;
    ret |= bytes[2] << 8;
    ret |= bytes[3];
    return ret;
}

it might be more time consuming than a general int i = *(reinterpret_cast<*int>(&myCharArray)); but will always get the endianness right on both big and small endian systems.