c# - Bitwise endian swap for various types

Question

With the help of various sources, I have written some SwapBytes methods in my binary reader class that swap endian in ushort, uint, and ulong, all using bitwise operations all in raw C# with no need for any unsafe code.

public ushort SwapBytes(ushort x)
{
    return (ushort)((ushort)((x & 0xff) << 8) | ((x >> 8) & 0xff));
}

public uint SwapBytes(uint x)
{
    return ((x & 0x000000ff) << 24) +
           ((x & 0x0000ff00) << 8) +
           ((x & 0x00ff0000) >> 8) +
           ((x & 0xff000000) >> 24);
}

public ulong SwapBytes(ulong value)
{
    ulong uvalue = value;
    ulong swapped =
         ((0x00000000000000FF) & (uvalue >> 56)
         | (0x000000000000FF00) & (uvalue >> 40)
         | (0x0000000000FF0000) & (uvalue >> 24)
         | (0x00000000FF000000) & (uvalue >> 8)
         | (0x000000FF00000000) & (uvalue << 8)
         | (0x0000FF0000000000) & (uvalue << 24)
         | (0x00FF000000000000) & (uvalue << 40)
         | (0xFF00000000000000) & (uvalue << 56));
    return swapped;
}

How would i go about creating the same methods but for the signed versions of each of these types, such as short, int and long, Using only the same methods as above, and what improvements could be made to the methods above?

Answer 1

Instead of conceptually deconstructing to separate bytes and then reassembling them the other way around, you can conceptually swap groups of bytes, like this: (not tested)

public uint SwapBytes(uint x)
{
    // swap adjacent 16-bit blocks
    x = (x >> 16) | (x << 16);
    // swap adjacent 8-bit blocks
    return ((x & 0xFF00FF00) >> 8) | ((x & 0x00FF00FF) << 8);
}

Doesn't help much (or at all) for 32 bits, but for 64 bits it does (not tested)

public ulong SwapBytes(ulong x)
{
    // swap adjacent 32-bit blocks
    x = (x >> 32) | (x << 32);
    // swap adjacent 16-bit blocks
    x = ((x & 0xFFFF0000FFFF0000) >> 16) | ((x & 0x0000FFFF0000FFFF) << 16);
    // swap adjacent 8-bit blocks
    return ((x & 0xFF00FF00FF00FF00) >> 8) | ((x & 0x00FF00FF00FF00FF) << 8);
}

For signed types, just cast to unsigned, do this, then cast back.