Endian[n]ess, language-specific problems and help with egcs.

[N8TM@aol.com]

In a message dated 8/18/98 4:54:49 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
smith@vaj5184.tu.hac.com writes:

> SGI have some kind of support for both BE and LE.
>  
>  I've also seen somewhere that VAX seemed to use neither BE 
>  ('1234') or LE ('4321'), but instead '2143' or something 
>  like that. Is that right?
If you can present the situation in a comprehensible fashion, you will have
done a service.

Yes, the MIPS CPU's internally use a byte order like the one of the VAX
architecture.  But, SGI Fortran, at least, uses binary data files in big
endian order for compatibility with other Unix architectures.  As you point
out, the internal byte order is big-endian for 16 bit groups within floating
point numbers.  But are the integers  fully little-ended?

In a case like this, the binary files used by a gnu compiler may not match
those used by proprietary compilers.