Program to check the endianness of a machine. - January 9, 2011

endian.c

/*
 * endian.c
 * Program to check the endianness of a machine.
 *
 * Copyright (C) 2011 - Kartik Singhal
 *
 * License: GNU General Public License version 3
 *
 */

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
	int num = 0x1451;
	char* p = (char*) &num;
	char* q = p+1;
	printf("First byte:  %x\n", *p);
	printf("Second byte: %x\n", *q);
	(*p == 0x51) ? printf("This machine is Little Endian\n") :\
	 printf("This machine is Big Endian\n") ;

	return 0;
}

/*
 * This program uses some reference from:
 * http://sites.google.com/site/insideoscore/endianness
 * and the author wants to acknowledges the same.
 */

/*
 * OUTPUT (on a an Intel Core 2 Duo based machine):
 *******************************************************************************
kartik@PlatiniumLight:~$ gcc endian.c 
kartik@PlatiniumLight:~$ ./a.out
First byte:  51
Second byte: 14
This machine is Little Endian

********************************************************************************
*/