Re: Why is "endianness" relevant when storing data on disks but not when in memory?

From: Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua_at_xn--mlform-iua.no>
Date: Mon, 07 Jan 2013 11:19:06 +0100

Doug Ewell, Sun, 6 Jan 2013 20:57:58 -0700:
Doug Ewell, Sun, 6 Jan 2013 20:57:58 -0700:

> The bottom line for me is, it would be nice if there were a
> shorthand way of saying "big-endian UTF-16," and many people
> (including you?) feel that "UTF-16BE" is that way, but it is not.

One could say "UTF-16", big-endian. Or big-endian "UTF-16". That’s
pretty short.

> That term has a DIFFERENT MEANING. The following stream:
>
> FE FF 00 48 00 65 00 6C 00 6C 00 6F
>
> is valid big-endian UTF-16, but it is NOT valid "UTF-16BE" unless the
> leading U+FEFF is explicitly meant as a zero-width no-break space,
> which may not be stripped.

I believe I understand this reasonably well. I think we are looking for
a term is unaffacted by how we label it.
leif halvard silli
Received on Mon Jan 07 2013 - 04:25:58 CST

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