Endianness

In computing, the term endian or endianness refers to the ordering of individually addressable sub-components within the representation of a larger data item as stored in external memory (or, sometimes, as sent on a serial connection). Each sub-component in the representation has a unique degree of significance, like the place value of digits in a decimal number. These sub-components are typically 16-, 32- or 64-bit words, 8-bit bytes, or even bits. Endianness is a difference in data representation at the hardware level and may or may not be transparent at higher levels, depending on factors such as the type of high level language used.