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authorAndrew M. Kuchling <amk@amk.ca>2010-02-22 15:13:17 +0000
committerAndrew M. Kuchling <amk@amk.ca>2010-02-22 15:13:17 +0000
commitdfd01489094204dbffffd49c280e2e3bece2c155 (patch)
tree7ceac6e9f2cd38aa4807dc225f3e8c42cb7a59a8
parent6b2bd05b163507746223184d980599e6514774ac (diff)
downloadcpython-git-dfd01489094204dbffffd49c280e2e3bece2c155.tar.gz
#6414: clarify description of processor endianness.
Text by Alexey Shamrin; I changed 'DEC Alpha' to the more relevant 'Intel Itanium'.
-rw-r--r--Doc/library/struct.rst8
1 files changed, 5 insertions, 3 deletions
diff --git a/Doc/library/struct.rst b/Doc/library/struct.rst
index d29bd7bb77..a115c1d026 100644
--- a/Doc/library/struct.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/struct.rst
@@ -187,9 +187,11 @@ following table:
If the first character is not one of these, ``'@'`` is assumed.
-Native byte order is big-endian or little-endian, depending on the host system.
-For example, Motorola and Sun processors are big-endian; Intel and DEC
-processors are little-endian.
+Native byte order is big-endian or little-endian, depending on the host
+system. For example, Intel x86 and AMD64 (x86-64) are little-endian;
+Motorola 68000 and PowerPC G5 are big-endian; ARM and Intel Itanium feature
+switchable endianness (bi-endian). Use ``sys.byteorder`` to check the
+endianness of your system.
Native size and alignment are determined using the C compiler's
``sizeof`` expression. This is always combined with native byte order.