home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
/ NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #1 / NN_1993_1.iso / spool / comp / arch / 12172 < prev    next >
Encoding:
Internet Message Format  |  1993-01-08  |  1.6 KB
  1. Path: sparky!uunet!paladin.american.edu!darwin.sura.net!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!hal.com!darkstar.UCSC.EDU!cats.ucsc.edu!haynes
  2. From: haynes@cats.ucsc.edu (Jim Haynes)
  3. Newsgroups: comp.arch
  4. Subject: Re: A theory for Big & Little Endian's origin
  5. Message-ID: <1ikscgINN6rl@darkstar.UCSC.EDU>
  6. Date: 8 Jan 93 21:40:32 GMT
  7. References: <1iinltINNi0l@darkstar.UCSC.EDU> <C0JE18.8Mp@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> <1993Jan8.100549.28792@sei.cmu.edu>
  8. Organization: University of California; Santa Cruz
  9. Lines: 24
  10. NNTP-Posting-Host: hobbes.ucsc.edu
  11.  
  12.  
  13. In article <1993Jan8.100549.28792@sei.cmu.edu> firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth) writes:
  14. >In article <C0JE18.8Mp@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
  15. >
  16. >>Also, when Hebrew texts use the traditional representation of numbers
  17. >>by Hebrew letters, it is definitely Big Endian.  To my knowledge, this
  18. >>seems to be universal
  19. >
  20. >To my knowledge too.  At least, I can confirm that Egyptian, Babylonian,
  21. >Greek, Roman and Mayan numbers were big-endian.
  22.  
  23. Well I wasn't talking just about numbers. Endian-ness also applies to 
  24. text strings stored in computer words.  If you go Big-Endian then
  25. text strings read left to right when you print out the characters in a
  26. word from left to right.  If you go Little-Endian then you need to
  27. print a core dump in hex or octal left to right and in characters
  28. right to left.
  29. -- 
  30. haynes@cats.ucsc.edu
  31. haynes@cats.bitnet
  32.  
  33. "Ya can talk all ya wanna, but it's dif'rent than it was!"
  34. "No it aint!  But ya gotta know the territory!"
  35.         Meredith Willson: "The Music Man"
  36.