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From: eppstein@garfield (David Eppstein)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Endian wars
Message-ID: <6133@columbia.edu>
Date: 21 Jan 89 22:48:12 GMT
Sender: news@columbia.edu
Organization: Columbia University CS Department
Lines: 11

I don't why I'm contributing to this recurring flamefest, but here goes...

Big endian lets you use integer comparison instructions to do string
compares a word at a time.  Little endian means you are stuck with a
byte at a time.

The arguments about how people expect to read things seem pretty bogus
to me.  One of the things computers are very good at doing is format
conversion.
-- 
David Eppstein  eppstein@garfield.cs.columbia.edu  Columbia U. Computer Science