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The Byte Order Fallacy


Whenever I see code that asks what the native byte order is, it's almost certain the code is either wrong or misguided. And if the native b...

The entire Plan 9 system ran, without architecture-dependent #ifdefs of any kind, on dozens of computers of different makes, models, and byte orders. Ironically, when you read a Mac-written file on a PC, it always worked, which demonstrates that someone at Adobe figured out something about byte order. [Note added in 2013: I'm told by folks at Adobe that the option was for TIFF files and only needed for third-party plugins.

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Byte Order Fallacy