From: Steve Coltrin <spcoltri@...>
Date: 2000-12-22T20:40:02+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:7949] Re: Determining endianness

Robert Feldt <feldt@ce.chalmers.se> writes:

> We've previously discussed how to determine endianness in C code but can
> you think of any way to do it in Ruby without compiling an extension?

Here's how I do it:

i = 0x01020304

case [i].pack('l')
  when [i].pack('V')
    $CFLAGS += " -DLITTLE_ENDIAN"
  when [i].pack('N')
    $CFLAGS += " -DBIG_ENDIAN"
  else
    p "Sorry, your machine has an unusual byte order which is not supported."
    exit!
end

-spc