Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!elbereth.rutgers.edu!hardees.rutgers.edu!patterso From: patterso@hardees.rutgers.edu (Ross Patterson) Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: "big endian" and "little endian" - first usage for computers Message-ID: Date: 31 Dec 88 21:27:23 GMT References: <2766@cbnews.ATT.COM> <10147@well.UUCP> Organization: Rutgers Univ., CCIS Lines: 15 > 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. I.e. if you had the value 0xAABBCCDD stored at >location , then you'd specify to get at the low order byte >(0xDD), word (0xCCDD), and full longword. No funny pointer arithmetic is >needed. On the other hand, MSBF prevents the ridiculousness of performing multi-byte arithmetic piecemeal, they way Intel 80[x]8x machines have to. It's unnecessarily dificult to manage numbers when the bits aren't in a neat sequence. Ross Patterson Rutgers University Center for Computer and Information Services