converting C to C#

Question

I'm trying to convert this C code to C#, is there a C# equivalent to the C union typedef?

struct sockaddr_in {
    short   sin_family;
    u_short sin_port;
    struct  in_addr sin_addr;
    char    sin_zero[8];
};

typedef struct in_addr {
  union {
    struct {
      u_char s_b1,s_b2,s_b3,s_b4;
    } S_un_b;
    struct {
      u_short s_w1,s_w2;
    } S_un_w;
    u_long S_addr;
  } S_un;
 } IN_ADDR, *PIN_ADDR, FAR *LPIN_ADDR;

Thanks.

Answer 1

You may check out the following page . This being said, in .NET you have classes that allows you to work directly with sockets and TCP/IP such as Socket, TcpListener, TcpClient and you don't need to translate C code blindly.

Answer 2

Whilst the others definitely have a point - this is likely something you really don't need to do - there is a way to simulate unions in C# using StructLayoutAttribute (example of simulating a union here ).

But don't do it. The purpose of this C union seems to be to permit bit twiddling parts of a 4 byte long. Using a union in this way depends on byte order knowledge of the target architecture, something that C# cannot guarantee.

In C# - or any other language where portability is a concern - if you want to get or set the high byte/low byte/etc you need to use explicit bit shifting as explained here .

But then don't do that either. Do like others have said and don't port this code. Someone's already done it for you, most likely Microsoft in the built in libraries ;).