Byte Order Mark


I am in the process of implementing BOM support for our SOAP protocol. A BOM gives a hint on how to interpret the rest of the data. We are going to support following BOM

FEFF UTF-16BIG ENDIAN
FFFE UTF-16LITTLE ENDIAN
FFBBFF UTF-8

The adjectives big-endian and little-endian refer to which bytes are most significant in multi-byte data types and describe the order in which a sequence of bytes is stored in a computer’s memory.

Many mainframe computers, particularly IBM mainframes, use a big-endian architecture. Most modern computers, including PCs, use the little-endian system. The PowerPC system is bi-endian because it can understand both systems.

The terms big-endian and little-endian are derived from the Lilliputians of Gulliver’s Travels, whose major political issue was whether soft-boiled eggs should be opened on the big side or the little side. Likewise, the big-/little-endian computer debate has much more to do with political issues than technological merits. 

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