Penguin
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Little Endian? is when you store/send the number "0x01020304" as "04 03 02 01". This was used by smaller machines since they tended to be only 8 bit, and they could load the first byte, increment it, and then if it "overflowed" they could fetch the next byte and increment it, making adding nice and easy. Larger machines didn't care as much, they weren't 8 bit :)

Intel machines were traditionally "Little" machines, and so they use LittleEndian, perhaps the only major computer system left in the world that does. Everyone else is BigEndian. This tends to cause problems when you use networks, since networks use NetworkByteOrder which is usually BigEndian.

"There are 10 kinds of people in the world; those who know binary and those who don't" - Seen on the net

"There are 01 kinds of people who know binary; LittleEndians and everyone else.." - zcat(1)

One little, two little, three LittleEndians, four little, five little, six LittleEndians... -- crb