Big-Little Endian

["dwilliam at larry.ATL.GE.COM" at andrew.dnet.ge.com]

>
> person asks for the folklore behind big/little endian terms.
>
The allusion is to Swift's _Gulliver's Travels_, in which two races
of people fought wars over the question of which end of an egg should
be broken to open it.  Swift was satirizing the religious orthodoxy
of his day.  Extending this to today's computer marketplace is left
as an exercise for the reader.
 
Dan
-- 
Dan Williams, Systems & Scientific Software, consultant to:
GE Advanced Technology Labs | Internet: dwilliams at atl.ge.com
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