java & endianness [Re: Binary tx format for an array?]

Mark Lewis <mark(dot)lewis(at)mir3(dot)com> writes:

> Java tried so hard to hide endianness from you that it didn't provide
> any real support for those times when you DO need to be aware of it.

Could you give sample cases when you DO need it? I don't think that
many people write hardware drivers in Java ;-)

I don't think network communication qualifies either, see below.

> So the "convention" looks kind of like this (snipped from the PG JDBC
> driver):
>
> public void SendInteger4(int val) throws IOException
> {
> SendChar((val >> 24)&255);
> SendChar((val >> 16)&255);
> SendChar((val >> 8)&255);
> SendChar(val&255);
> }

This code is like copied/pasted from the JDK:

* @since JDK1.0
DataOutputStream#writeInt()

Any reason for duplicating it in the driver?

> There finally were endian-aware buffer operations added in JDK 1.4,

Could you detail which ones? Thanks in advance.