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From: yde@necis.UUCP (David Elins ext. 220)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: Byte order (retitled)
Message-ID: <280@necis.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 8-Apr-86 17:50:30 EST
Article-I.D.: necis.280
Posted: Tue Apr  8 17:50:30 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 11-Apr-86 20:12:10 EST
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Reply-To: yde@necis.UUCP (David Elins ext. 220)
Organization: NEC Information Systems
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What is right.

Whether a lexicographic sort be the equal of a numeric,
or mayhaps the addresses of bytes within a word mimic their significance.

'Tis not ours to decide, we may only give our thanks that there be (so
far) only two ways of attaching significance to these beasties.

A good article on the "Byte Order" problem appeared in the April Fool's
day issue of Computer Language Magazine. The author (Mike Higgins) took
a very sensible stand on what is the "right" way to order bytes.

That issue of CL was much fun. The article on Un*x is particularly good;
it answered a lot of questions for me on why things are the way they are.