How to find out if a processor is "little endian" or "big endian"

Ashli

Hi all,

How to find out if a processor is "little endian" or "big endian" by writing C code???

Jun 5 '07 #1

Silent1Mezzo

Hi all,

How to find out if a processor is "little endian" or "big endian" by writing C code???

Just ask your processor which it is...wouldn't this be easiest?

Basically what you should do is research the subject, think of how you're going to code this, start coding it....THEN come back here and ask about any problems you have.

Thanks

Jun 5 '07 #2

weaknessforcats

Put a 1 in an unsigned int.

Add three bytes to the address of the int.

Assign the contents of that address to an unsigned char.

If your 1 is there, you are big endian.

Jun 5 '07 #3

RedSon

Put a 1 in an unsigned int.

Add three bytes to the address of the int.

Assign the contents of that address to an unsigned char.

If your 1 is there, you are big endian.

Explanation needed !

Jun 5 '07 #4

AdrianH

Put a 1 in an unsigned int.

Add three bytes to the address of the int.

Assign the contents of that address to an unsigned char.

If your 1 is there, you are big endian.

Not necessarily, you could just have a random 1 on the stack.

Try using a union with a 4 byte char and a long. Put 1 in the long and then check where the one showed up on the 4 byte char. Zeroth byte is little endian, third byte is big endian.

BTW, this trick only sorta works. There are processors that you can map different regions of memory to be big or little endian. The hardware does everything for you.

Also there are some processors out there that do it on a bit rather then on a byte level. I don't know which, but there is literature stating that this design exists.

To further complicate things, apparently floating point and integer endianness don't have to coincide.


Adrian

Jun 5 '07 #5

weaknessforcats

BTW, this trick only sorta works. There are processors that you can map different regions of memory to be big or little endian. The hardware does everything for you.

True. But at the byte level there is no endian-ess.

Your union solution is a good one. It is equivalent to my suggestion.

I didn't know floating point had its own endian.

Jun 5 '07 #6

AdrianH

True. But at the byte level there is no endian-ess.

Yes, usually HW does magic on what is actually stored.

Your union solution is a good one. It is equivalent to my suggestion.

Now that I think about it, your right. I think that the union is somewhat cleaner, but they are equivialant.

I didn't know floating point had its own endian.

It apperently can, I read that somewhere. Maybe on wikipidia.


Adrian

Jun 5 '07 #7

narasimha435

i also want the reply interms of c or c++ code format

Jun 28 '07 #8

weaknessforcats

Just follow the steps I outlined. The code is simple and is the same for C and C++.

Jun 28 '07 #9

aalam

int a = 10;
char *ch = (char*)a;
printf("%d",*ch);

Execute this code, if output is "10" then your processor is "Little Endian" and if output is "0" then your processor is "Big Endian".

Jun 28 '07 #10

JosAH

There are a few nice macros/functions available: hton*() and ntoh*(). The following
does the job for you:

kind regards,

Jos

Jun 28 '07 #11

archonmagnus

Here's a code that'll do it for you (for educational purposes):

Jun 28 '07 #12