C Programming - Floating Point Issues - Discussion

Discussion Forum : Floating Point Issues - General Questions (Q.No. 8)
8.
A float occupies 4 bytes. If the hexadecimal equivalent of these 4 bytes are A, B, C and D, then when this float is stored in memory in which of the following order do these bytes gets stored?
ABCD
DCBA
0xABCD
Depends on big endian or little endian architecture
Answer: Option
Explanation:
No answer description is available. Let's discuss.
Discussion:
36 comments Page 4 of 4.

Kavita said:   1 decade ago
Krunal was rite about the processors architecture but explanation for Little and Big Endian architecture got reversed.

Here a Proper and Correct Explanation.

Consider the storage of the value ABCD
Here,

A-MSB(Most Significant Byte).
B
C
D-LSB(Least Significant Byte).

In Little Endian Architecture, LSB is at the lowest address of the memory location. Suppose memory location starts with 0
D->0
C->1
B->2
A->3
Intel Processors(CPUs) are Little Endian.

In Big Endian Architecture, MSB is at the lowest address of the memory location. As shown below.
A->0
B->1
C->2
D->3
While Motorola 680x0 CPUs are big-endian

For more details and confirmation visit : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endianness#Big-endian

Harish said:   2 decades ago
Thanks dude :)

Souravb said:   2 decades ago
Thanks dude!!

Nishtha said:   2 decades ago
Thank you so much.

Krunal said:   2 decades ago
"Little Endian" means that the lower-order byte of the number is stored in memory at the lowest address, and the high-order byte at the highest address. For example, a 4 byte Integer

ABCD

will be arranged in memory as follows:
Base Address+0 Byte0
Base Address+1 Byte1
Base Address+2 Byte2
Base Address+3 Byte3

Intel processors (those used in PC's) use "Little Endian" byte order.
"Big Endian" means that the high-order byte of the number is stored in memory at the lowest address, and the low-order byte at the highest address. The same 4 byte integer would be stored as:

Base Address+0 Byte3
Base Address+1 Byte2
Base Address+2 Byte1
Base Address+3 Byte0

Motorola processors (those used in Mac's) use "Big Endian" byte order.

Abirami said:   2 decades ago
What is 'big endian or little endian architecture'?

Please, give me the correct explanation.


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