Re: How to byte swap an IEEE Float?

[Marius Amado Alves <amado.alves@netcabo.pt>]

On 28 Jun 2005, at 21:43, Björn wrote:

>> Sure. You know, I meant representation = bits and bytes, implying same
>> length. It seems the OP already has the float type (IEEE_Float_32),
>> 32-bit = 4-byte long, and the data are floats of this length, only
>> different in byte order.
>>
>> OP, if the data are of a different length, then you have to unchecked
>> convert first to a float type of that length, and then normal convert
>> to the final type (risking Constraint_Error).
>
> All the data in the file are of 32 bits float so that should be ok.
> The target for the values is at the moment x86 (although I do expect it
> to work on PowerPC as well so I check System.Default_Bit_Order before
> doing any byte swapping). My dirty workaround for the moment was to
> read the data as a string. I was merly wondering which is the
> normal/"best" way to deal with this, since I expect it to be a
> fairly common task. A packed byte array does however seem like a much
> better idea than handling it as a string.

It is better. Because it's portable. Probably you got away with a 
String because on your system a String happens to be a packed array of 
bytes, but this is not guaranteed for all systems by the standard.