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Re: [DotGNU]Endianness?
From: |
Fergus Henderson |
Subject: |
Re: [DotGNU]Endianness? |
Date: |
Sun, 9 Nov 2003 21:23:39 +1100 |
User-agent: |
Mutt/1.3.28i |
On 08-Nov-2003, Rhys Weatherley <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Saturday 08 November 2003 08:01 am, Rich Baumann wrote:
> > On Fri, 2003-11-07 at 12:30, HJ wrote:
> > > Is it known wether MS.NET is host-endian or little-endian always?
> >
> > The ECMA spec requires that conforming CLRs always be little-endian.
>
> No it doesn't. The encoding of programs, when stored in IL binaries, is
> little-endian (you have to pick something for the on-the-wire format). But
> there are no ECMA-specified endian restrictions on the CLR's data
> representation once the program is loaded. Restrictions may occur because of
> badly written compilers (e.g. Microsoft's C/C++ compiler), but not because of
> anything that ECMA specifies.
Does Microsoft's C/C++ compiler actually generate code which _requires_
that the CLR's run-time data representation be little-endian?
Or does it just generate code whose behaviour might be different
if run on a system with different endianness?
If the latter, why would you consider it bad for a C/C++ compiler
to generate code whose behaviour may depend on the enddianess of the
target system?
--
Fergus Henderson <address@hidden> | "I have always known that the pursuit
The University of Melbourne | of excellence is a lethal habit"
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh> | -- the last words of T. S. Garp.