Re: Endianness

[Larry Smith]

Paul Pluzhnikov wrote:
> emp1953 <edgar.purdy@lmco.com> writes:
> 
>> A rumor is circulating that there is a compiler setting that will
>> change the "endianness" from little to big or vice versa.
> 
> Anyone circulating this rumor is clueless.
> 
> Anyone asking "any truth to this" (that's you) is also clueless:
> endianness of most processors is *fixed in stone* at the time of
> their design. A notable exception is MIPS, which can be configured
> (at boot time?) to run in either big-endian, or little-endian mode.
> 
> Cheers,

Perhaps the confusion comes from the GCC docs:

PowerPC Options:

 `-mlittle'
 `-mlittle-endian'
      On System V.4 and embedded PowerPC systems compile code for the
      processor in little endian mode.  The `-mlittle-endian' option is
      the same as `-mlittle'.


 `-mbig'
 `-mbig-endian'
      On System V.4 and embedded PowerPC systems compile code for the
      processor in big endian mode.  The `-mbig-endian' option is the
      same as `-mbig'.


Similar options are mentioned for SPARC, ARM, MCore, IA-64, etc

The docs MAY lead some folks to believe that it is possible.