Processing of big endian and little endian in Golang

In computer science, Big-Endian and Little-Endian are terms that describe the order in which multi-byte data is stored in memory. These two endiannesses are of great significance in network transmission, file storage and cross-platform data exchange. In Golang, these two endianness orders also need to be understood and processed. The following is a detailed explanation of the big-endian and little-endian order in Golang:

1. Definition

Big-Endian: High-bit bytes are stored on the low-address end of memory, and low-bit bytes are stored on the high-address end of memory. For example, the storage method of hexadecimal number 0x12345678 in large endian order is: 12 34 56 78 (high bytes are first).
Little-Endian: The low-bit byte is stored on the low-address end of memory, and the high-bit byte is stored on the high-address end of memory. For example, the hexadecimal number 0x12345678 is stored in little endianness: 78 56 34 12 (lower bytes are first).

2. Processing in Golang

Golang'sencoding/binaryPackages provide tools for handling large-endian and small-endian order. This package definesandTwo byte order representations are used to convert integers, floating-point numbers and other types into byte sequences or parse numeric values from byte sequences.

Convert numeric values to byte sequences：

useFunctions that specify byte order (big endian or little endian) to write numeric values into a byte stream.

Sample code:

var num uint32 = 0x12345678
buf := new()
err := (buf, , num) // Big endian sequenceif err != nil {
	(" failed:", err)
}
("BigEndian: %x\n", ()) // Output: 12 34 56 78
()
err = (buf, , num) // Little endian sequenceif err != nil {
	(" failed:", err)
}
("LittleEndian: %x\n", ()) // Output: 78 56 34 12

Parse the numeric value from the byte sequence：

useFunctions that specify the byte order (big endian or small endian) to parse numeric values from the byte stream.

Sample code:

bigEndianBytes := []byte{0x12, 0x34, 0x56, 0x78}
var bigEndianNum uint32
buf := (bigEndianBytes)
err := (buf, , &amp;bigEndianNum)
if err != nil {
	(" failed:", err)
}
("BigEndian parsed number: 0x%x\n", bigEndianNum) // Output: 0x12345678
littleEndianBytes := []byte{0x78, 0x56, 0x34, 0x12}
var littleEndianNum uint32
buf = (littleEndianBytes)
err = (buf, , &amp;littleEndianNum)
if err != nil {
	(" failed:", err)
}
("LittleEndian parsed number: 0x%x\n", littleEndianNum) // Output: 0x12345678

III. Application scenarios

Network transmission: In network programming, large endian (network endianness) is usually used to transmit multi-byte values. Golang passedTo deal with the byte order problem in network transmission.
File storage: When reading or writing a binary file, if the file uses a specific endian (such as big endian), it is necessary to explicitly specify the endian order for read and write operations.

4. Things to note

When performing small-end conversion, it is necessary to ensure that the data type and length before and after the conversion are consistent to avoid data loss or errors.
Golang'sencoding/binaryThe package only supports conversion of numbers, boolean values and their slices, and does not support direct conversion of complex data types such as strings.

To sum up, big endian and little endian in Golang are terms used to describe the order in which multibyte data is stored in memory. passencoding/binaryThe package provides tools that can easily convert between numerical and byte sequences and deal with data exchange problems between different endians.

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