Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!purdue!decwrl!granite!basalt!jmd
From: jmd@basalt.dec.com (John Danskin)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: "big endian" and "little endian" - first usage for computers
Message-ID: <344@granite.dec.com>
Date: 29 Dec 88 23:36:41 GMT
References: <2766@cbnews.ATT.COM> <10147@well.UUCP> <203@mic.UUCP>
Sender: news@granite.dec.com
Reply-To: jmd@basalt.DEC.COM (John Danskin)
Organization: DEC Technology Development, Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 33

In article <203@mic.UUCP> d25001@mic.UUCP (Carrington Dixon) writes:
:In article <10147@well.UUCP> ewhac@well.UUCP (Leo 'Bols Ewhac' Schwab) writes:
::	Least-significant-byte first has the advantage of being able to
::specify the low order byte or word of a longword in memory by specifying the
::same address for all three.
::
:     Uh,  why would you _want_ to do such a thing?  
:
:     And conversely, the most-significant-byte-first has the advantage of
:being able to specify the _high_ order byte or word of a longword in memory
:be specifying the same address of all three.  One "advantage" seems about
:as "significant" as the other ...

I like least-significant-byte first for infinite/extended precision
packages. It's sort of nice starting out at offset zero to do the extended
precision add and just incrementing pointers until you finish. This is
the kind of thing I think Bols Ewhac is talking about.

With most-significant-byte first, first you have to ask how big the thing
is, and then position yourself at the end of it (the fancy pointer arithmetic)
and then back off (decrement pointers) as your calculation progresses.

If you really care about HEX dumps. Why not do the byte swizzling in the
dumper? Add another 'od' option. od *needs* more options.

Of course it doesn't really matter -> otherwise we would all be using the one
true format.


John Danskin				| jmd@decwrl.dec.com  or decwrl!jmd
DEC Advanced Technology Development	| (415) 853-6724 
100 Hamilton Avenue			| My comments are my own.
Palo Alto, CA  94301			| I do not speak for DEC.