BIN2W()

Convert unsigned short encoded bytes into Harbour numeric

Syntax

BIN2W( <cBuffer> ) --> nNumber

Arguments

<cBuffer> is a character string that contain 16 bit encoded unsigned short integer (least significant byte first). The first two bytes are taken into account, the rest if any are ignored.

Returns

BIN2W() return numeric integer (or 0 if <cBuffer> is not a string).

Description

BIN2W() is one of the low level binary conversion functions, those functions convert between Harbour numeric and a character representation of numeric value. BIN2W() take two bytes of encoded 16 bit unsigned short integer and convert it into standard Harbour numeric value.

You might ask what is the need for such functions, well, first of all it allow you to read/write information from/to a binary file (like extracting information from DBF header), it is also a useful way to share information from source other than Harbour (C for instance).

BIN2W() is the opposite of W2BIN()

      // Show header length of a DBF
      FUNCTION main()
      LOCAL nHandle, cBuffer := space( 2 )
      nHandle := fopen( "test.dbf" )
      IF nHandle > 0
         fseek( nHandle, 8 )
         fread( nHandle, @cBuffer, 2 )
         ? "Length of DBF header in bytes:", BIN2W( cBuffer )
         fclose( nHandle )
      ELSE
         ? "Can not open file"
      ENDIF
      RETURN NIL

Status

Ready

Compliance

BIN2W() works exactly like CA-Clipper's BIN2W()

Files

Library is rtl

See Also

• BIN2I()
• BIN2L()
• BIN2U()
• I2BIN()
• L2BIN()
• W2BIN()
• WORD()
• U2BIN()
• FREAD()