POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.off-topic : Programming langauges : Re: Programming langauges Server Time
5 Sep 2024 15:27:35 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Programming langauges  
From: Invisible
Date: 26 Oct 2009 11:16:05
Message: <4ae5bd35$1@news.povray.org>
>> It still makes me sad that Intel chose to store bytes in the wrong 
>> order all those years ago...
> 
> Define "wrong" in this context...

When you read data from a first, you read the first byte first, and the 
last byte last. Therefore, the first byte should be the MSB. But no, 
Intel decided that this would be too easy. And now we have the spectacle 
of cryptosystems and so forth designed with each data block being split 
into octets and reversed before you can process it...

> It so happens that Intel format is actually doing it "right" in this 
> respect: AFAIK two of the most important serial interfaces - RS232 and 
> Ethernet - both transmit each byte starting with the least significant 
> bit first.

Well then that would be pretty dubious as well. (AFAIK, MIDI does it the 
correct way around.)

> BTW, Intel is not the only company that preferred little-endian convention.

Indeed, the 6502 did it decades ago. Still doesn't make it right.


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