CSAPP:Big endian and Little endian

 

Some machines choose to store the object in memory ordered from least significant byte to most, while other machines store them from most to least. The former convention—where the least significant byte comes first—is referred to as little endian. This convention is followed by most machines from the former Digital Equipment Corporation (now part of Compaq Corporation), as well as by Intel. The latter convention—where the most significant byte comes first—is referred to as big endian. 

 

    Continuing our earlier example, suppose the variable x of type int and at address 0x100 has a hexadecimal value of 0x01234567. The ordering of the bytes within the address range 0x100 through 0x103 depends on the type of machine:

 

Note that in the word 0x01234567 the high-order byte has hexadecimal value 0x01, while the low-order byte has value 0x67.