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From: williams@nssdcs.gsfc.nasa.gov (Jim Williams)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Endianism (was Unicode vs ISO DIS 10646)
Message-ID: <5204@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov>
Date: 4 May 91 17:43:32 GMT
References: <10003@plains.NoDak.edu> <ENAG.91May3200814@maud.ifi.uio.no>
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Reply-To: williams@nssdcs.UUCP (Jim Williams)
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In article <ENAG.91May3200814@maud.ifi.uio.no> enag@ifi.uio.no (Erik Naggum) writes:
>In article <10003@plains.NoDak.edu> kkim@plains.NoDak.edu (kyongsok kim) writes:
>>   could anyone please explain what "endianism" is?
>
>[Explaination of endianism deleted.]

I will just add that the terms "big endian" and "little endian"
probably originated as references the Gulliver's Travels, by Jonathan
Swift.  The Liliputians and Blefescuans (right?  I forget the names,
exactly) were having a war over whether one should open one's eggs at
the big end or the little end.  The futility of such an argument makes
a good analogy to the futility of trying to decide which byte ordering
scheme is better.

Jim

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