The term endian is the order of bytes in a representation of a binary number. This characteristic of numeric representation in digital computing hardware is called endianness. Endianness is architecture-dependent. Different computer architectures may have different endianness.
Endianness may also refer to the represented order of individual bits, but in modern computers, this is extremely uncommon.
Endian types
In big endian representation of a 32-bit number, the most-significant byte occupies the lowest memory address in the word. The remaining bytes, in descending order of significance, occupy the next three addresses.
In little endian representation of a 32-bit number, the least-significant byte occupies the lowest memory address in the word. The remaining bytes, in order of ascending significance, occupy the next three addresses.
Other types of endianness are generically known as middle-endian or mixed-endian. Examples are mid-big endian and mid-little endian, where pairs of bytes are swapped.
Bit shift, End, Logical operation, Programming terms
