Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!ucbvax!UCBVAX.BERKELEY.EDU!"Dan Karron From: Dan Karron@UCBVAX.BERKELEY.EDU Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi Subject: Big-Little Endian Message-ID: <9104100708.AA23484@karron.med.nyu.edu> Date: 10 Apr 91 07:08:33 GMT Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: karron@cmcl2.nyu.edu Organization: The Internet Lines: 32 The R2000 processors used in the IRIS-4D series workstations are configured BIG-ENDIAN. This means that sign bit at the lowest address byte. Big-Endian machines number the bytes of a word (size of an int) from 0 to 3. Byte 0 holds the sign and the most significant bits. For halfwords(size of a short) the bytes are numbered 0 to 1. Byte 0 holds the sign and MSB. I am quoting the Assembly Language Programmer's Guide, Page 1-1, version 1. I also wrote some code to import/export IEEE and Big Endian numbers to VAX Little Endian numbers, so if you need to know this, you probably can use my code. Now for the real important question: Where did the term Big-Little Endian come from ? What is the folklore behind this jargon ? Must be heap-bit-tail to tell! How! | karron@nyu.edu (e-mail alias ) Dan Karron, Research Associate | | Phone: 212 263 5210 Fax: 212 263 7190 New York University Medical Center | | 560 First Avenue Digital Pager <1> (212) 397 9330 | | New York, New York 10016 <2> 10896 <3> |