Lab 3: Endianness

Overview

You will write a program to convert the contents of a byte stored in an array between Big Endian and Little Endian. Endianness defines the order of byte. You will work with a simulation of a byte.

Big Endian Byte Order

Big endian byte order is most significant byte (the “big end”) of the data is placed at the byte with the lowest address. The rest of the data is placed in order in the next three bytes in memory.

For example, little-endian byte order stores a hex value of 0x12345678 in memory as:

Big Endian Byte Order 0x12345678

0x100

0x101

0x102

0x103

12

34

56

78

Little Endian Byte Order

Little endian byte order is the least significant byte (the “little end”) of the data is placed at the byte with the lowest address. The rest of the data is placed in order in the next three bytes in memory.

For example, little-endian byte order stores a hex value of 0x12345678 in memory as:

Little Endian Byte Order 0x12345678

0x100

0x101

0x102

0x103

78

56

34

12

Sources and additional information:

Arrays in C

An array in C is always passed by reference. You need three pieces of data when working with an array:

  1. The pointer to the array

  2. The type of data

  3. The length of the array

Here are some ways to create an array:

// Allocate memory, but don't initialize
int array[10];

// Initialize with zeros
int array[10] = {0}

// Create and populate with data
int array[] = {0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9};

// Get the pointer to an array
int *p = array;

Use these pages as a reference

Task 1: Create an Array

Your first task is to create an array of the power table using big-endian ordering that represents a byte that is ordered from most significant to least significant.

Big Endian Byte Order for the power table

2 7

2 6

2 5

2 4

2 3

2 2

2 1

2 0

128

64

32

16

8

4

2

1

  1. Open up ide.judge0.com or use VSC and GCC using a template from C Templates.

  2. Create an int array of the power table. Start with 2 0 to 2 7.

    • Your program should work with an array of size ‘n’.

    Hint

    • Use a define statement to set the array size at compile time.

      #define SIZE 8

    • You can change it later to 16 to process an array from 2 0 to 2 15.

  3. Print the contents to the screen

Expected Output
Big Endian Order:     128 63 32 16 8 4 2 1

Task 2: Reverse the Array

Your second task is to reverse the array to show the the power table in little-endian ordering that represents a byte in order from least significant to most significant.

Little Endian Byte Order for the power table

2 0

2 1

2 2

2 3

2 4

2 5

2 6

2 7

1

2

4

8

16

32

64

128

Note

Do not create a function for this yet. You will do that in a later step.

  1. Reverse the array.

  2. Print the array showing big-endian ordering.

Expected Output
Big Endian Order:     128 63 32 16 8 4 2 1
Little Endian Order:  1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128

Task 3: Create Functions

We don’t like doing a lot of work in function main(). Instead, we should create some functions to do the work.

C does not contain an array length property like higher-level languages. You must calculate the size based on the memory allocation. See the answer to the question How do I determine the size of my array in C? in Stack Overflow.

For this activity, you will use the value in the #define instead of trying to determine the array size.

  1. Create a function using this prototype that prints the contents of an array.

    /*
 * int array:  the pointer to the array
 */
void print_array(int *);

  2. Create a function using this prototype that creates and returns an array. Here is an example of how to return an array from a function in C.

    /*
 * return value:   the pointer to the array
 */
int *create_array();

  3. Create a function using this prototype that reverses the array

    /*
 * int array:        the pointer to the big-endian array
 * return value:     the pointer to the little-endian array
 */
int *convert_to_little_endian(int *);

Task 4: User Selected Order

Use the command line args to give the user an option to view the array in the little-endian or big-endian byte order.

  1. Add the command line args code from C Templates.

  2. Print this message if there are no args:

    Usage: endianness [value]
    b    Big Endian Byte Order
    l    Little Endian Byte Order

  3. Convert the arg to a char instead of doing a string comparison. chars are integers, which makes it easy to work with. See an example of how to convert a command line arg to a char.

    • *argv[] in main() is a 2D array (an array of strings).

    • argv[1] is a char array or a string terminated with the \0 (the null terminator).

    • For example, executing endianness.exe l will contain an array with two chars: { 'l' , '\0' }

    • You can get the 'l' char by accessing the first element of the arg.

      // argv[1]    --> { 'l' , '\0' }
// argv[1][0] --> 'l'
char order = argv[1][0];

  4. Display the array in big or little-endian order based on the user selection.