CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cstringendianness
eagertoLearn
eagertoLearn

Reputation: 10132

why byte ordering (endianess) is not an issue for standard C string?

My professor mentioned that byte ordering (endianess) is not an issue for standard C String (Char arrays):

for ex: char[6]="abcde";

But he did not explain why?

Any explanations for this will be helpful

Upvotes: 2

Views: 585

Answers (3)

Nnaik
Nnaik

Reputation: 158

Smallest Unit of memory storage is 1 Byte, If you have a 4 byte value ( ex : 0x01234567 ) It will be arranged and fetched in the order of Endianness in contigous locations

Big Endian : 01 23 45 67 Little Endian : 67 45 23 01

Whereas for a 1 byte Value it can be fetched from one memory location itself since that is the smallest block of memory , with no need for byte ordering .

Hope this Helps !

Upvotes: 0

brain storm
brain storm

Reputation: 31242

A char takes up only one byte, thats why the ordering does not matter. for example, int has 4 bytes and these bytes could be arranged in little-endian and big-endian`.

Eg: 0x00010204 can be arranged in two ways in memory:

04 02 01 00 or 00 01 02 04

char being a single byte will be fetched as single byte to CPU. and String is just a chararray.

Upvotes: 0

user2209008
user2209008

Reputation:

Endianess only matters when you have multi-byte data (like integers and floating point numbers). Standard C strings consist of 1-byte characters, so you don't need to worry about endianness.

Upvotes: 2

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