struct sockaddr rant

When I look in netinet/in.h on my system it's defined with the type uint32_t. Over here (http://www.beej.us/guide/bgnet/output/html/multipage/sockaddr_inman.html) it's defined as an unsigned long. Why wouldn't they do what they did with IPv6 addresses and just using an array of chars? If they're already using the assumption that CHAR_BIT is 8 for IPv6, why carry the extra, unnecessary assumption that the implementation provides a 32-bit integer type?

The only reason I can really think of is to ensure portability to platforms that use larger chars, but since they aren't going to work with IPv6 structs, why not redesign IPv4 structs?

And if we're fixing that, why not change the following functions:

uint32_t htonl(uint32_t hostlong);
uint32_t ntohl(uint32_t netlong);

to something like:

void *htonl(void *dest, unsigned long val);
unsigned long ntohl(const void *src);

/end rant

>>30-33
Stop making it sound like you can magically conjure up arbitrary endianness switching functions if all you really mean is that there aren't integer types for every possible integer size.

I'm perfectly well aware of how C handles integers when stored as integer variables. We're talking about memory layouts, not registers. Your integers do however have an associated memory layout. If you alias your types a little, i.e. (uint8_t *)&my32bitint, you'll see the byte order.

It's not hard to make a 24-bit integer conversion though. Do the exact same thing as >>30 but return it in a 32-bit integer aligned to the byte index 0. Then again, if you really want these functions I suggest you write them in whatever way you find most convenient, but use the provided endianness functions from endian.h to do the conversion, because, and I can't stress this enough, THEY ARE SINGLE CYCLE INSTRUCTIONS. Also, use uint8_t instead of unsigned char, or typedef your own.