Endianness in Computing

Understanding Endianness

Endianness refers to the order in which bytes are stored in a multi-byte data type.

Big-Endian versus Little-Endian

Endianness comes in two primary forms:

• **Big-endian (BE)**: Stores the most significant byte first.
• **Little-endian (LE)**: Stores the least significant byte first.

Implications for Byte Order

When reading multiple bytes, endianness determines the order in which they are interpreted:

Endianness	Example (2-byte integer)
Big-endian	[Most significant byte] [Least significant byte]
Little-endian	[Least significant byte] [Most significant byte]