[LCP]#defines to know Endianness

[Greg Black]

On 2004-07-01, John Navil Joseph wrote:

> Yes, linux does define the BYTE_ORDER macro, but it may not be
> defined in other operating systems (windows?).

Who cares?  But if you do care, why not find out?

> I'm just wondering if C Standard requires this macro to be defined
> by all compilers, then I can be sure that mine would be a truly
> portable code.

The C Standard does not care about stuff like that and there is
nothing it offers for it.

You have two choices:

  1. Find something like I suggested that works on all the
     platforms you care about; or

  2. Write your own macro and use that -- it's incredibly
     trivial, after all.

You might also ask yourself why you're doing this at all.  It's
rare for well-written code to need to know stuff like this.

Cheers, Greg