New submission from Karl Magdsick <kmagds...@hotmail.com>: In http://docs.python.org/dev/library/struct.html,
it says "Native byte order is big-endian or little-endian, depending on the host system. For example, Motorola and Sun processors are big-endian; Intel and DEC processors are little-endian." This is a gross over-generalization at best. Off the top of my head, current Linux kernels run the Intel Itanium in big-endian mode. (Though, I don't recall if there's a non-privileged instruction to flip endianness, system headers and system calls are defined in big-endian order, which is what's most relevant to the struct module.) Sun SPARC v9 is bi-endian. Intel Itanium and XScale processors are bi-endian. Dec Alphas are bi-endian. (Though, I'm only aware of Cray using Alphas in big-endian mode.) The quoted paragraph should name specific processors which are single- endian (Intel Core 2, Sun SPARC v8) and/or provide a Wikipedia reference, rather than making incorrect statements. Intel Itanium machines running Linux are probably the most common systems where this statement's inaccuracy is likely to cause confusion among developers. ---------- assignee: georg.brandl components: Documentation messages: 90107 nosy: georg.brandl, kmag severity: normal status: open title: struct module : processor endianness descriptions misleading versions: Python 2.4, Python 2.5, Python 2.6, Python 2.7, Python 3.0, Python 3.1 _______________________________________ Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org> <http://bugs.python.org/issue6414> _______________________________________ _______________________________________________ Python-bugs-list mailing list Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-bugs-list/archive%40mail-archive.com