Documentation
From my personal library, The Internet

man page:

     Standard C Library (libc, -lc)


SYNOPSIS

     #include <arpa/inet.h>

     uint32_t
     htonl(uint32_t hostlong);

     uint16_t
     htons(uint16_t hostshort);

     uint32_t
     ntohl(uint32_t netlong);

     uint16_t
     ntohs(uint16_t netshort);


DESCRIPTION

     These routines convert 16 and 32 bit quantities between network byte
     order and host byte order.  On machines which have a byte order which is
     the same as the network order, routines are defined as null macros.

     These routines are most often used in conjunction with Internet addresses
     and ports as returned by gethostbyname(3) and getservent(3).


SEE ALSO

     gethostbyname(3), getservent(3)


STANDARDS

     The byteorder functions are expected to conform with IEEE Std
     POSIX.1-200x (``POSIX.1'').


HISTORY

     The byteorder functions appeared in 4.2BSD.


BUGS

     On the VAX bytes are handled backwards from most everyone else in the
     world.  This is not expected to be fixed in the near future.

BSD                              June 4, 1993                              BSD

Man(1) output converted with man2html