Re: Endian and Ada

[Mike Young <mikey@mcs.com>]

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.  I'm almost positive that it's *possible* to make
> endian-dependant code using unchecked programming (necessary for systems
> 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.)
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> -Mike

===========
Byte ordering becomes an issue when communicating across different 
architectures, but is not normally a concern otherwise. I can think of 
few languages, with assembler being a *possible* exception, where this 
is an issue worthy of conscious thought. The question you might now ask 
yourself (or your professor) is why byte-ordering should be a concern 
for programmers not involved in cross-platform programming issues, 
regardless of programming language.

Mike.