Bytes order and words order

[Richard Earnshaw]

> OK, thanks.  I was actually thinking of the word-order of
> floating-point numbers not that of integral types.  I think I should
> name it  __TARGET_FLOAT_WORDS_ORDER__ ?  
> Is it reasonable to assume that the byte order of integral and
> floating point coincide? 

I'm not aware of any machines where the byte ordering doesn't match that 
for integers -- at least in the sense that the 'sign bit' of a floating 
point number lives in the 'most significant' byte of a word, etc.  But I'm 
not sure if IEEE-754 actually requires this.

R.

BTW, if you are picking apart a float like this, does it mean that you are 
assuming IEEE-754 format numbers?