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1.3.1 Byte Ordering

Some computer architectures number bytes in a binary word from left to right, which is referred to as big-endian. This documentation uses big-endian bit diagrams. Other architectures number the bytes in a binary word from right to left, which is referred to as little-endian. The underlying stream format enumerations, objects, and records in RPL are stored in little-endian.

Using big-endian and little-endian methods, the number 0x12345678 would be stored as shown in the following table.

Byte order

Byte 0

Byte 1

Byte 2

Byte 3

Big-endian

0x12

0x34

0x56

0x78

Little-endian

0x78

0x56

0x34

0x12