Question

Is there a way to help convert a binary to a specified record in Delphi 5? And this binary is in little-endian.

Answer 1

Windows on Intel/AMD is little-endian too, so no endianness conversion is required.

Now if you can show the specific record and where you get the binary data from, it will be easier to answer.

You can read any kind of record from a file. If your record is declared thus that it has exactly the same layout as the binary data, you can read an entire record at once. If not, you’ll have to read each field separately.

Generally, you can read records, or individual fields of a record, from a stream using

var
  MyStream: TStream;
...
  MyStream := TFileStream.Create(Filename, options);
...
  MyStream.Read(variable, sizeof(variable));

If your data comes from a TCP socket, you can, for instance, write it into a TMemoryStream, as bytes. Then you can reset the pointer of the stream to the beginning and read the data as shown.

Update

As David commented, if the bytes come over the TCP connection in network byte order, then it makes sense to run each field through one of the WinSock functions ntohs() or ntohl(), after all the above, but before the items in the record are used. ntohs() converts 2 byte types, while ntohl() converts 4 byte types. To send items, use the reverse functions htons() and htonl() on each item in the record before sending them (separately).

FWIW, it is quite easy, in Win32, to change endianness using:

// byte swaps 32 bit values
function BSwap32(I: DWORD): DWORD; { inline; }
asm
        BSWAP   EAX
end;

// byte swaps 16 bit values
function BSwap16(I: WORD): WORD; { inline; }
asm
        XCHG    AL,AH
end;

// byte swaps 64 bit values
function BSwap64(I: QWORD): QWORD; { inline; }
asm
        MOV     EDX,[EAX]
        MOV     EAX,[EAX+4]
        BSWAP   EAX
        BSWAP   EDX
end;