Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!amdcad!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!mcvax!ukc!tcdcs!tcdmath!ch
From: ch@maths.tcd.ie (Charles Bryant)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Endian wars
Summary: natural language says nothing about endinanity
Message-ID: <522@maths.tcd.ie>
Date: 8 Feb 89 21:51:13 GMT
References: <6133@columbia.edu> <186@aucsv.UUCP> <389@bilver.UUCP>
Reply-To: ch@maths.tcd.ie (Charles Bryant)
Organization: Maths Dept., Trinity College, Dublin
Lines: 27

In article <389@bilver.UUCP> bill@bilver.UUCP (bill vermillion) writes:
>In article <186@aucsv.UUCP> ok@aucsv.UUCP (Richard Okeefe) writes:
>>Before arguing about whether big-endian order or little-endian
>>order is "more natural" for people,
>>
>>So _both_ conventions are "natural" in human writing systems.
> 
>And mixed conventions are considered normal in spoken English.
>
>Consider that, for example twenty-five or thirty-six would fit the
>"big-endian" defintion, the numbers   thir-teen, four-teen, would be
>considered "little endian"

"Twenty-five" etc do not fit into _either_ big-or little- endian categories.
Nor do most numbers in English because it isn't a positional system. It is
possible to speak it backwards without losing meaning: five [and] twenty.
(five twenty is a time!). It is spoken with the most significant part first
to allow an estimate of the size to be made easily, I suppose, and obviously
if the number is spoken without qualifiers like "hundred" this is impossible.
Numbers for computers are always (as far as I know) given as a fixed size
object (in programs) of as a string of digits (most I/O) where it is either
unnecessary or impossible to estimate the magnitude of a number without
having it all.
-- 

		Charles Bryant.
Working at Datacode Electronics Ltd.