Endianness

Why is endianness significant?

If you transfer data between machines (removable media or network),

you need to know which order it is stored in.

Things to note:

The order refers to BYTES, not bits. The bits are not simply reversed from lsb to msb.

Ordering only refers to data stored in MEMORY.

Data in registers stored from msb to lsb, left to right, regardless of endianness.

32-bit register: b31....b0

Endianness has nothing to do with the order of C-style strings.

What is a C-style string?

Array of char, ended by '\0'

Each char is 1 byte

course

C

M

S

C

3

1

1

\0

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

char course[]= "CMSC 311";