Little Endian vs Big Endian?

endianness
Clinton Jooooones picture Clinton Jooooones · Feb 26, 2014 · Viewed 23.4k times · Source

I'm having troubles wrapping my head on the two. I understand how to represent something in big endian.

For example -12 is 1111 1111 1111 0100

But why is the little endian representation 1111 0100 1111 1111 instead of 0100 1111 1111 1111?

Answer

lurker picture lurker · Feb 26, 2014

Endianness is about byte address order. Little endian means the lower significant bytes get the lower addresses. Big endian means the other way around. So it's about the bytes (8-bit chunks) not nibbles (4-bit chunks). Most computers we use (there are a few exceptions) address bytes at the individual address level.

Taking the -12 example:

Little endian, in memory, would be:

000000: F4
000001: FF

Big endian, in memory, would be:

000000: FF
000001: F4

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