Terms
||big endian / little endian ||||<(>"Little Endian" means that the low-order byte of the number is stored in memory at the lowest address, and the high-order byte at the highest address. (The little end comes first.) For example, a 4 byte LongInt
- Byte3 Byte2 Byte1 Byte0
will be arranged in memory as follows:
- Base Address+0 Byte0 Base Address+1 Byte1 Base Address+2 Byte2 Base Address+3 Byte3
Intel processors (those used in PC's) use "Little Endian" byte order.
"Big Endian" means that the high-order byte of the number is stored in memory at the lowest address, and the low-order byte at the highest address. (The big end comes first.) Our LongInt, would then be stored as:
- Base Address+0 Byte3 Base Address+1 Byte2 Base Address+2 Byte1 Base Address+3 Byte0
Motorola processors (those used in Mac's) use "Big Endian" byte order. ||