The Origin of the Terms Big-Endian and Little-Endian (2003) (ling.upenn.edu) 23 points by cluckindan 6mo ago ↗ HN
[–] RcouF1uZ4gsC 6mo ago ↗ I think there is peace now because little-endian won.All modern CPU are little endian (or dual selectable)Other than backward compatibility, there is non need for little endian.
[–] jmclnx 6mo ago ↗ IIRC, Mark Williams Company had a patent on the ability to run the same binary on both big and little endian machines.https://patents.justia.com/assignee/mark-williams-companyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Williams_CompanyI wonder what happened to it and why could Linux not use it. I think it was released under a free licence.
[–] juancn 6mo ago ↗ The bug is in the positional number system. It would make much more sense to add digits to the right and left-align everything.Hex dumps would make sense, columns in spreadsheets would be left aligned always, and so on.But we're too late for that.
5 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 22.5 ms ] threadAll modern CPU are little endian (or dual selectable)
Other than backward compatibility, there is non need for little endian.
https://patents.justia.com/assignee/mark-williams-company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Williams_Company
I wonder what happened to it and why could Linux not use it. I think it was released under a free licence.
Hex dumps would make sense, columns in spreadsheets would be left aligned always, and so on.
But we're too late for that.