Differentiate between little endian and big endian byte ordering.

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Differentiate between little endian and big endian byte ordering.

Little endian and big endian are two different ways of ordering bytes in computer architecture.

In little endian byte ordering, the least significant byte (LSB) is stored at the lowest memory address, while the most significant byte (MSB) is stored at the highest memory address. This means that the byte order follows the natural reading order of numbers in human language, where we read from right to left. Little endian is commonly used in x86-based systems.

In big endian byte ordering, the most significant byte (MSB) is stored at the lowest memory address, while the least significant byte (LSB) is stored at the highest memory address. This is the opposite of little endian and is used in some other architectures like PowerPC and SPARC.

The choice between little endian and big endian byte ordering depends on the specific architecture and the requirements of the system. It is important to consider byte ordering when transferring data between different systems or when working with data that is stored in a different byte order.