endian


endian

(data, architecture)Suffix used in the terms big-endian andlittle-endian that describe the ordering of bytes in amulti-byte number.

The term comes from Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" via thefamous paper "On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace" by DannyCohen, USC/ISI IEN 137, 1980-04-01.

The Lilliputians, being very small, had correspondingly smallpolitical problems. The Big-Endian and Little-Endian partiesdebated over whether soft-boiled eggs should be opened at thebig end or the little end.

See also middle-endian, holy wars, NUXI problem, swab.