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Gianni Mariani wrote:
> Ron Natalie wrote:
>
....

>
> Anyhow - I just remembered I have a g++ - solaris cross compiler loaded
> on my machine (which is big endian) and the it actually does the
> (TM)right thing.

The statement above is blatently wrong and even incorrect.

A g++ cross compiler does in fact NOT do the (TM)right thing.

Jocke P <> wrote in message news:<bifo0s$bbe$>...
> struct MachineEndian
> {
> enum { is_big = ('B' == (char)(int)'Big ') };
> };
>
> - and it "works" (ie is 0) on my little-endian machine.

Why do you call that working? If we assume for the sake of argument
(NOT TRUE!) that '1234' depends on endianness, then it should work
like this:

little endian: '1234' = 0x34333231
big endian: '1234' = 0x31323334

So your test failed.

If that isn't clear, consider:

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
char a[5]="1234";

int i = *(int*)a;

int j = '1234';

// does i == j ?

printf("i=0x%x, j=0x%x", i, j);

return 0;
}

By the way, Intel assemblers use the "big endian" definition of
'1234'.

Sam