Little Big Endianness Converter

Endianness, also known as byte order, is a concept that describes the sequence in which bytes are arranged within a larger data type (such as a word, a double word, etc.) when stored in computer memory. This arrangement matters when a computer system reads from or writes to memory, especially when this operation crosses system boundaries, such as during network communication or file I/O between systems with different endianness. There are two main types of endianness:

In big-endian ordering, the most significant byte (MSB) of the word is stored in the smallest address, and the least significant byte (LSB) is stored in the largest address. A simple way to remember this is that the "big end" (the most significant part) comes first. For example, the hexadecimal number 0x1A2B3C4D stored in a 4-byte memory space would look like this:

        
          Address N  : 1A (MSB)
          Address N+1: 2B
          Address N+2: 3C
          Address N+3: 4D (LSB)
        
      

Big-endian is commonly used in network protocols (often referred to as network byte order) and is the standard ordering in significant internet protocols.

In little-endian ordering, the LSB of the word is at the smallest address, and the MSB is at the largest address. In this case, the "little end" (the least significant part) comes first. So the same hexadecimal number 0x1A2B3C4D would be stored as:

        
          Address N  : 4D (LSB)
          Address N+1: 3C
          Address N+2: 2B
          Address N+3: 1A (MSB)
        
      

The little-endian format is notably used by Intel x86 architecture processors and therefore is widespread in personal computers.