Xref: utzoo comp.arch:7929 comp.misc:4754 comp.lang.misc:2568 comp.protocols.misc:458 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ncis.llnl.gov!ncis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!purdue!mentor.cc.purdue.edu!l.cc.purdue.edu!cik From: cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.misc,comp.lang.misc,comp.protocols.misc Subject: Re: "big endian" and "little endian" - first usage for computer Summary: A little history Keywords: dump little-endian strings Message-ID: <1102@l.cc.purdue.edu> Date: 19 Jan 89 13:03:22 GMT References: <170@microsoft.UUCP> <4008@hubcap.UUCP> <482@babbage.acc.virginia.edu> <5721@cbmvax.UUCP> Organization: Purdue University Statistics Department Lines: 40 In article <5721@cbmvax.UUCP>, jesup@cbmvax.UUCP (Randell Jesup) writes: > In article <11113@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> ggs@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Griff Smith) writes: > >In article <5703@cbmvax.UUCP>, jesup@cbmvax.UUCP (Randell Jesup) writes: > >> Personally, that's a nice kludge to get around the fact that little- > >> endian is "naturally" written right to left, bottom to top by most people. > >> However, people don't read that way, certainly not text. > > > >Where `people' are defined to be those who happen to be members of the > >Western cultures that read left to right. What does that make the others? > > Yes, sorry, I forgot to qualify that as people is "Western" > cultures. This is the smallest problem with existing systems/software > for non-"Western" people (does your software support kanji? Arabic?) > > -- > Randell Jesup, Commodore Engineering {uunet|rutgers|allegra}!cbmvax!jesup A look at ancient writing of numbers, both in symbols and spelled out, indicates that it is pretty much big-endian. Except for the units and tens digits, I know of no language in either the Semitic or the Indo-European group which does not express numbers with the most significant part first. For example, in Hebrew (and probably also in Arabic, they are sufficiently similar), one would say the equivalent of two hundred and thirty, NOT thirty and two hundred. It would be written right-to-left big-endian, just as the language is written. These languages then introduced (mostly) decimal representations, using different characters for multiples of different powers of 10. Again, they were written big-endian. Then the idea of using the same symbol in each place, with a zero to hold the place, originated in India. The Indian writing is left-to-right. After the Moslem invasion of India, they adopted the Indian decimal notation without change. That is why the Arabic expression appears as little-endian. There does not seem to be any support from "natural" languages for the little-endian approach. -- Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907 Phone: (317)494-6054 hrubin@l.cc.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet, UUCP)