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From: jdn@misc.Eng.Sun.COM (Jeff Nisewanger)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: new word order?
Message-ID: <8999@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 2 Mar 91 20:49:31 GMT
References: <606@mtndew.Tustin.CA.US> <1991Mar1.095745.13399@siesoft.co.uk>
Sender: news@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca.
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In article <1991Mar1.095745.13399@siesoft.co.uk> imw@siesoft.co.uk (Ian Wild) writes:
>Didn't Microsoft provide a switch for this in their Xenix cc?
>
>Bytes in a long:
>
>68xxx:               1 2 3 4
>80x86 (normally):    4 3 2 1
>80x86 (+ cc -Mb):    2 1 4 3
>
>My question is WHY?


	I *think* that 2143 was the byte ordering of longs on the
PDP-11. I don't know if this was done specifically for compatibility with
the PDP but my guess is that an early C compiler implementation on the '86
may have used the PDP-11 byte ordering since the PDP Unix C compiler was
the primary 16-bit reference implementation of the time.



	Jeff
--
Jeff Nisewanger                         ARPA: jdn@Eng.Sun.COM
Window Systems Group                    UUCP: ...!sun!jdn
Sun Microsystems, Inc.                  415/336-5743