CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cpu
allthewayaround
allthewayaround

Reputation: 91

Why is endianess not relevant for single bytes?

If I am flipping endianess of the value 0xA1A2A3A4 I will result in 0xA4A3A2A1. But I don't understand why the rule seems to stop at the per-byte level. Ie if I had a single byte 0xA1 I can't flip it. It is the same for a big and little machine.

Yet if we look at 0xA1 in binary it is 10100001 and we could flip that to 01011110 but that is 0x5E. So, I don't understand. Is endianess not about binary? Is it at the registry level (or whatever we want to call the level above binary, per-byte level)? If we have a 32 bit CPU is it actually still 8 bit registers just grouped into 4? If we operate on a single byte of 8 bits, why doesn't endianess matter?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 33

Answers (1)

Hiram
Hiram

Reputation: 153

Probably because the endianess is related to the memory addresses, not to the content itself.

Endianess is the order of the bytes in the computer memory.

Upvotes: 1

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