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Re: little-endian

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On 11/26/2012 5:01 AM, Jongware wrote:
> On 25-Nov-12 20:39 PM, Alan Curry wrote:
>> In article <50af8697$0$6979$e4fe514c@news2.news.xs4all.nl>,
>> Jongware  <jongware@no-spam.plz> wrote:
>>>
>>> The smallest value comes first? Then it should be called 'little
>>> beginning".
>>>
>>> Intel desktop CPUs are little-endian; since a value 0x01234567 gets
>>> stored in four consecutive bytes as
>>>
>>> data+0 : 0x67
>>> data+1 : 0x45
>>> data+2 : 0x23
>>> data+3 : 0x01
>>>
>>> the 'littlest' value gets placed at the end.
>>
>> You're insisting on the wrong meaning of the word "end", leading you
>> to the
>> conclusion that an object has one end, and the opposite of the end is the
>> beginning. Look at the source material:
>>
>> (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/829/829.txt)
>> |It began upon the following occasion.  It is allowed on all hands,
>> |that the primitive way of breaking eggs, before we eat them, was
>> |upon the larger end; but his present majesty's grandfather, while
>> |he was a boy, going to eat an egg, and breaking it according to
>> |the ancient practice, happened to cut one of his fingers.
>> |Whereupon the emperor his father published an edict, commanding
>> |all his subjects, upon great penalties, to break the smaller end
>> |of their eggs.
>>
>> All your statements using the phrases "the beginning" and "the end" are
>> meaningless because in the sense used in the story, an egg has 2 ends
>> and no
>> beginnings. You can start eating it by breaking it on the big end or the
>> little end.
>
> This canonical example -- Gulliver's Travels -- was written to
> illustrate the absurdedness of human behavior. When used in a
> quantifiable, enumeratable environment such as "the order of bytes in
> memory" it makes perfect sense, since memory has an enumerated
> "beginning" (0) and "end" (the maximum address). It's not as if the
> nomenclature has been adopted by a random process.
>

the issue here though is the use of the term "end".

typically, in reference to the use of "little-endian" vs "big-endian", 
it is the question "which end of the number comes first".

typically, "little-endian" then means "little-end comes first" (or, 
"least significant byte comes first"), and "big-endian" means "big-end 
comes first" ("most significant byte comes first").

where "first" here can be taken as "lowest address in memory".

example (little-endian):
address+0=LSB ("little end")
...
address+3=MSB ("big end")

example (big-endian):
address+0=MSB ("big end")
...
address+3=LSB ("little end")

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little-endian bob <bob@coolfone.comze.com> - 2012-11-15 13:45 -0800
  Re: little-endian JJ <jaejunks@glegooilma-swapit.com> - 2012-11-15 23:33 +0000
  Re: little-endian bob <bob@coolfone.comze.com> - 2012-11-16 10:38 -0800
    Re: little-endian "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> - 2012-11-16 23:32 +0100
      Re: little-endian BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-11-16 21:17 -0600
        Re: little-endian "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> - 2012-11-17 10:26 +0100
          Re: little-endian "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-11-17 11:38 +0000
            Re: little-endian "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> - 2012-11-17 13:56 +0100
              Re: little-endian BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-11-17 11:58 -0600
            Re: little-endian Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2012-11-17 19:35 +0000
              Re: little-endian "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-11-17 19:50 +0000
          Re: little-endian BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-11-17 11:30 -0600
            Re: little-endian Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2012-11-18 09:28 +1300
              Re: little-endian Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-17 14:48 -0600
                Re: little-endian BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-11-17 16:22 -0600
                Re: little-endian Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2012-11-18 15:17 +1300
                Re: little-endian "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-11-18 09:13 +0100
                Re: little-endian Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2012-11-18 21:33 +1300
                Re: little-endian "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-11-18 10:15 +0100
                Re: little-endian BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-11-18 03:03 -0600
                Re: little-endian "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-11-18 10:29 +0100
                Re: little-endian BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-11-18 12:50 -0600
  Re: little-endian Robin Vowels <robin.vowels@gmail.com> - 2012-11-22 04:49 -0800
    Re: little-endian Jongware <jongware@no-spam.plz> - 2012-11-23 15:22 +0100
      Re: little-endian pacman@kosh.dhis.org (Alan Curry) - 2012-11-25 19:39 +0000
        Re: little-endian Jongware <jongware@no-spam.plz> - 2012-11-26 12:01 +0100
          Re: little-endian "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-11-26 14:02 +0100
            Re: little-endian Jongware <jongware@no-spam.plz> - 2012-11-26 15:34 +0100
              Re: little-endian "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-11-26 17:03 +0100
              Re: little-endian Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-26 17:44 -0600
                Re: little-endian Robin Vowels <robin.vowels@gmail.com> - 2012-11-28 23:43 -0800
                Re: little-endian Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-29 22:46 -0600
          Re: little-endian BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-11-26 08:30 -0600
        Re: little-endian Robin Vowels <robin.vowels@gmail.com> - 2012-11-28 23:45 -0800

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