The order of bytes in an integer is implementation-dependent; it depends on how the processor handles integers. In most cases, you do not need to know. However, if you are reading bytes from a file in binary mode, or bytes from a network stream, and you need to interpret two or more bytes as parts of an integer, you will need to know what order they are in, and if necessary convert them to the order recognized by the processor.
The C network library (on Windows, it is called the Winsock library) contains a collection of functions that convert unsigned short and unsigned long types from the network order to the host order (that is, the order used by the processor on the current machine) and vice versa. The network ...
