RISC Machine Data Structure Word Al

[phil at ux1.cso.uiuc.edu]

Another problem you can encounter when dealing with data structure formats
imposed by hardware, particularly external hardware, is the byte order.
An example is handling TCP and IP headers.  The exact data structure is
defined very specifically, but making code that can deal with it AND be
portable across big and little endian machines requires a lot of care.
Such portable code may not be the most optimal depending on how it is
done.

--Phil Howard, KA9WGN--
<phil at ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>