From: Austin Ziegler <halostatue@...>
Date: 2006-11-16T22:42:10+09:00
Subject: Re: Endianess of the underlying platform

On 11/16/06, Francis Cianfrocca <garbagecat10@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/15/06, Eric Hodel <drbrain@segment7.net> wrote:
> >
> > On Oct 24, 2006, at 4:40 PM, Tim Pease wrote:
> >
> > > Does ruby provide a global or a method call to determine the endianess
> > > of the underlying platform?
> > >
> > > This is what I cooked up, but I'm wondering if there is a ruby way of
> > > doing this.
> > >
> > > BIG_ENDIAN = [0xFF00].pack('S') == [0xFF00].pack('n')
> >
> > Beware, some versions of ruby shipped with OS X have a broken pack
> > where the endianness is swapped.
> Kinky. Is it a bug, or a hack intended to make PowerPCs look like Intel
> chips?

Bug. It was fixed in a later OS update, IIRC.

-austin
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