From: Mathieu Bouchard <matju@...>
Date: 2001-01-20T13:17:44+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:9582] Re: Fast, loose, and out of control

On Sat, 20 Jan 2001, Conrad Schneiker wrote:
> What is the recommended Ruby way to determine whether you are (or a 
> particular thread is) running on a big-endian or little-endian CPU?

I don't know the official way, but this one seems simple:

	"%08x"% ([0x04030201].pack'l').unpack('N')[0]

returns "04030201" for big endian
returns "01020304" for little endian
returns something else for something else.

also:

	[1].pack('l')[0]

returns 0 on big endian
returns 1 on little endian

matju