[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: Determining machine endian-ness
- Subject: Re: Determining machine endian-ness
- From: davidf(at)dfanning.com (David Fanning)
- Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 15:10:02 -0600
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.idl-pvwave
- Organization: Fanning Software Consulting
- References: <EvBpCE.Hru@midway.uchicago.edu>
- Xref: news.doit.wisc.edu comp.lang.idl-pvwave:11437
Mark Rivers (rivers@cars3.uchicago.edu) writes:
> Is there a way to determine whether the machine on which IDL is executing is
> big endian or little endian? I am trying to read a data file which I know
> contains little-endian data. I need to byte swap this data if IDL is running
> on a big-endian machine, but not byte-swap if it is running on a little-endian
> machine.
>
> It would be nice there were a field in !VERSION which contained this
> information. Right now I am testing if !VERSION.ARCH eq 'x26', 'alpha', etc.
> There must be a better way.
I see in the IDL 5.1 on-line help that there are keywords
SWAP_IF_BIG_ENDIAN and SWAP_IF_LITTLE_ENDIAN to the
BYTEORDER procedure that allow conditional byte ordering depending
upon the "endianness" of the machine IDL is running on. Sounds
like just the ticket. :-)
Cheers,
David
--
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting
E-Mail: davidf@dfanning.com
Phone: 970-221-0438
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/