On Friday, 1 June 2018 at 20:12:23 UTC, Kagamin wrote:
On Friday, 1 June 2018 at 10:04:52 UTC, Johannes Pfau wrote:
However you want to call it, the algorithms interpret data as
numbers which means that the binary representation differs
based on endianess. If you want portable results, you can't
ignore that fact in the implementation. So even though the
algorithms are not dependent on the endianess, the
representation of the result is. Therefore standards do
usually propose an internal byte order.
Huh? The algorithm packs bytes into integers and does it
independently of platform. Once integers are formed, the
arithmetic operations are independent of endianness. It works
this way even in pure javascript, which is not sensitive to
endianness.
It's a common programming misconception that endianness matters
much. It's one of those that just won't go away, like "GC
languages are slow" or "C is magically fast". I recommend reading
this:
https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/04/byte-order-fallacy.html
In short, unless you're a compiler writer or implementing a
binary protocol endianness only matters if you cast between
pointers and integers. So... Don't.
Atila
