View Source: BigEndian - Waikato Linux Users Group

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Numbering of bits within a byte, and bytes within a multi-byte integer, to correspond more closely to the order in which one might read them in a memory dump. Opposite of LittleEndian.

See [Endianness].

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Odd fact: even on big-endian CPUs, registers are still little-endian. To see this, consider the following pseudo-AssemblyLanguage sequence:

* move two-byte integer from ''A'' to ''X''
* move one-byte integer from ''X'' to ''B''

Question: will the byte at ''B'' end up containing the high byte or the low byte of ''A''?

In little-endian architectures, the answer is always “the low byte”. However, in big-endian architectures, the answer depends on whether ''X'' is a memory location or a register; if it’s a memory location, then ''B'' gets the high byte. Otherwise, it gets the low byte.

3 pages link to BigEndian:

NetworkByteOrder
ReligiousWar
LittleEndian

Last edited on Wednesday, September 30, 2009 5:30:54 pm by LawrenceDoliveiro

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