CJKV Information Processing, 2nd Edition

Basic Concepts and Terminology FAQ

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is easier than two mathematical operations. is is precisely why hexadecimal notation is

used very frequently in computer science and soware development.

In some cases, the order in which byte concatenation takes place matters, such as when

the byte order (also known as endianness) diers depending on the underlying computing

architecture. Guess what the next section is about?

What Are Little- and Big-Endian?

ere are two basic computer architectures when it comes to the issue of byte order: little-

endian and big-endian. at is, the order in which the bytes of larger-than-byte storage

units—such as integers, oats, doubles, and so on—appear.

*

One-byte storage units, such

as char in C/C++, do not need this special treatment. at is, unless your particular ma-

chine or implementation represents them with more than one byte. e following is a

synopsis of little- and big-endian architectures:

Little-endian machines use computing architectures supported by Vax and Intel pro-•

cessors. Historically, MS-DOS and Windows machines are little-endian.

Big-endian machines use computing architectures supported by Motorola and Sun •

processors. Historically, Mac OS and most Unix workstations are big-endian. Big-

endian is also known as network byte order.

Linux, along with Apple’s rather recent switch to Intel processors, has blurred this distinc-

tion, to t