Can endianness refer to bits order in a byte?

c endianness
Meda picture Meda · May 29, 2013 · Viewed 11k times · Source

I'm reading "Learning Core Audio: A Hands-On Guide to Audio Programming for Mac and iOS" by Chris Adamson and at one point the author describes big-endian as:

the high bits of a byte or word are numerically more significant than the lower ones.

However, until now I though the problem of big-little endian only applies to byte order and not bit order. One byte has the same bit order (left to right) no matter if we're talking about little endian or big endian systems. Am I wrong? Is the author wrong? Or did I misunderstood his point?

Answer

Michael Burr picture Michael Burr · May 29, 2013

Since you can't normally address the bits within a byte individually, there's no concept of "bit endianness" generally.

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