Newsgroups: comp.arch
From: hoey@zogwarg.tec.army.mil (Dan Hoey)
Date: 25 Jun 93 21:44:39 GMT
Subject: Re: why different endians (was Re: --- Endians)

>d...@silverton.berkeley.edu (D. J. Bernstein) writes:

>| Is there any _disadvantage_? No. Very little code depends on byte order.
>| So the chip designers just take whichever order is convenient.

Well, actually you can use big-endian machine instructions for sorting
strings faster.  This is a relic of our habit of sorting strings using
big-endian lexicographic order instead of little-endian.

Little-endian can be just a little easier for arithmetic, because the
mapping N->2^N is more useful than N->2^(Wordsize-N).  But that
advantage is pretty far down in the noise.

This is all pretty minimal, since converting one way or the other is
quick.

Dan Hoey
Hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil