From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me
X-Spam-Level: 
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID
	autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4
X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit
X-Google-Thread: 103376,9ae3749ddf1e6022
X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public
From: "Theodore E. Dennison" <dennison@escmail.orl.mmc.com>
Subject: Re: Endian and Ada
Date: 1996/04/08
Message-ID: <31697059.167EB0E7@escmail.orl.mmc.com>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 146426440
references: <4kamb9$om2@flute.aix.calpoly.edu>
content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
organization: Lockheed Martin Information Systems
mime-version: 1.0
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
x-mailer: Mozilla 2.0 (X11; I; SunOS 4.1.3_U1 sun4m)
Date: 1996-04-08T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Michael Anthony Porcelli wrote:
> 
> I'm taking a computer architecture class and my eyes have been opened to the
> incredible lack of progress that computer science has made in the area of
> architecture-independant programming.  One of the main problems that my
> professor likes to point out the endian problem and the fact that so much
> software is *not* endian-independant (due mainly to the widespread use of C
> and C++).  However, he is not familiar enough with Ada (nor am I) to know if
> Ada is endian-independant.  ...

It is not.

> writing).  I was wondering, however, if the day-to-day Ada software out
> there is written endian-independant (i.e. the language facilities used in
> most day-to-day programming don't depend on whether your architecture is
> "big" endian or "little" endian.)

In my experience, the answer is no. Typically the last application written
"loses" and has to swap bytes, unless a endian-aware communications protocol
(such as ASN.1) is used.

-- 
T.E.D.          
                |  Work - mailto:dennison@escmail.orl.mmc.com  |
                |  Home - mailto:dennison@iag.net              |
                |  URL  - http://www.iag.net/~dennison         |