endian
/ˈɛndɪən
/adjective (usually in phrase big-endian or little-endian) Computing
Denoting or relating to a system of ordering bytes in a word, or bits in a byte, in which the most significant (or least significant) item is put first: big-endian vs. little-endian representation of data a lot of communications and networking hardware is little-endian...
- In the bigendian systems, those bytes happened to be zeros (making the system appear to work properly), while on the little-endian systems, they were nonzero, causing the string to appear to be corrupted.
- Out of the many advantages to this format, one is quite relevant to Linux users: it is fully binary-compatible across big-endian and little-endian computers.
- Remember, on a little-endian machine, the first byte is the least significant one.
Origin
1980s: from Swift's Gulliver's Travels, in which big-endians and little-endians ate boiled eggs by breaking the ‘big’ end or ‘little’ end respectively.