.\" gd_alter_endianness.3.  The gd_alter_endianness man page.
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.TH gd_alter_endianness 3 "16 October 2014" "Version 0.9.0" "GETDATA"
.SH NAME
gd_alter_endianness \(em modify the byte sex of fields in a dirfile
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B #include <getdata.h>
.HP
.nh
.ad l
.BI "int gd_alter_endianness(DIRFILE *" dirfile ", unsigned long"
.IB byte_sex ", int " fragment_index ", int " recode );
.hy
.ad n
.SH DESCRIPTION
The
.BR gd_alter_endianness ()
function sets the byte sex of the format specification fragment given by
.I fragment_index
to
.I byte_sex
in the dirfile(5) database specified by
.IR dirfile .
The byte sex of a fragment indicate the endianness of data stored in binary
files associated with
.B RAW
fields defined in the specified fragment.  The byte sex of a fragment containing
no
.B RAW
fields is ignored.

The
.I byte_sex
argument should be one of the following:
.TP
.BR 0 " (zero)"
Indicating that the byte sex should be the native endianness of the host,
whichever that may be.
.TP
.B GD_BIG_ENDIAN
Indicating that the byte sex should be big endian.
.TP
.B GD_LITTLE_ENDIAN
Indicating that the byte sex should be little endian.
.TP
.RB ( GD_BIG_ENDIAN " | " GD_LITTLE_ENDIAN )
Indicating that the byte sex should be the opposite of the native endianness of
the host, whichever that may be.
.PP
Furthermore, any of these may be bitwise or'd
with
.B GD_ARM_ENDIAN
or
.B GD_NOT_ARM_ENDIAN
indicating that the floating point data are stored in the ARM middle-endian
format.
.PP
In addition to being simply a valid fragment index,
.I fragment_index
may also be the special value
.BR GD_ALL_FRAGMENTS ,
which indicates that the byte sex of all fragments in the database should
be changed.

If the
.I recode
argument is non-zero, this call will byte swap the binary data of affected
.B RAW
fields to account for the change in byte sex.  If the encoding of the
fragment is endianness insensitive, or if the data type is only one byte in
size, no change is made.  The I/O pointer of all affected
.B RAW
fields is reset to the beginning-of-frame.

If
.I recode
is zero, affected binary files are left untouched.

.SH RETURN VALUE
Upon successful completion,
.BR gd_alter_endianness ()
returns zero.  On error, it returns -1 and sets the dirfile error to a non-zero
error value.  Possible error values are:
.TP 8
.B GD_E_ACCMODE
The specified dirfile was opened read-only.
.TP
.B GD_E_ALLOC
The library was unable to allocate memory.
.TP
.B GD_E_ARGUMENT
The supplied
.I byte_sex
was invalid.
.TP
.B GD_E_BAD_DIRFILE
The supplied dirfile was invalid.
.TP
.B GD_E_BAD_INDEX
The supplied index was out of range.
.TP
.B GD_E_IO
An I/O error occurred while attempting to byte swap a binary file.
.TP
.B GD_E_PROTECTED
The metadata of the indicated format specification fragment was protected from
change, or the binary data of the fragment was protected from change and binary
file byte swapping was requested.
.TP
.B GD_E_UNCLEAN_DB
An error occurred while moving the byte-swapped file into place.  As a result,
the database may be in an unclean state.  See the
.B NOTES
section below for recovery instructions.  In this case, the dirfile will be
flagged as invalid, to prevent further database corruption.  It should be
immediately closed.
.TP
.B GD_E_UNKNOWN_ENCODING
The encoding scheme of the fragment is unknown.
.TP
.B GD_E_UNSUPPORTED
The encoding scheme of the fragment does not support binary file byte swapping.
.PP
The dirfile error may be retrieved by calling
.BR gd_error (3).
A descriptive error string for the last error encountered can be obtained from
a call to
.BR gd_error_string (3).
.SH NOTES
A binary file byte swap occurs out-of-place.  As a result, sufficient space
must be present on the filesystem for the binary files of all
.B RAW
fields in the fragment both before and after translation.  If all fragments
are updated by specifying
.BR GD_ALL_FRAGMENTS ,
the byte swapping occurs one fragment at a time.

An error code of
.B GD_E_UNCLEAN_DB
indicates a system error occurred while moving the byte-swapped binary data into
place or when deleting the old data.  If this happens, the database may be left
in an unclean state.  The caller should check the filesystem directly to
ascertain the state of the dirfile data before continuing.  For recovery
instructions, see the file
/usr/share/doc/getdata/unclean_database_recovery.txt.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR gd_open (3),
.BR gd_error (3),
.BR gd_error_string (3),
.BR gd_endianness (3),
.BR dirfile (5),
.BR dirfile-format (5)