Binary mode (command Options/Binary mode)


What kind of byte order to use: Either Little-endian, as used in Intel-computers or Big-endian, used for example in computers with a Motorola processor.
The difference between these modes is thus: Consider a longword, which is 4 bytes (named A to D) long.

Longword in processor register = ABCD.
The least significant bit, which has the value 1, is found in byte "D". In a processor register the longword is ordered in this way. If this value is written to a position in memory, then by Intel convention the longword is written in this way, with the growing offsets to the right:

Longword in memory = DCBA.
That is, the bytes making up the longword are written in reverse order as they are found in a processor register.

This means that a file written by a Big-endian machine will contain wrong longword and word values if read by a Little-endian machine without conversion.