Returns the system byte order flags.
In general a Boolean indicator for the byte order conversions is
enough. However this may need a bit more code in the application. To
make this more convenient we use flag set that describes the source
and the destination. Depending on their values the objects that
support byte order dependent functions decide if a conversion is
needed. This allows the developer just combine the system and the
source byte order flags in order to compose the correct flags.
Flags:
bit 0: System. 0 - little endian, 1 - big endian
bit 1: Media: 0 - little endian, 1 - big endian
bit 2: Explicit conversion. 0 - off, 1 - force reorder no matter
what are the other flags.
The routines where byte order must be considered usually work
with data from external media (file, buffer read from stream/file)
and the system memory. So the bit 0 describes the native byte order
for the OS/machine in its memory. Changing the bit 1 you can specify
what is the byte order in the external media.
All the Windows OS versions currently in use are little endian
(this includes Windows CE). Therefore this property will return on
all the platforms 0. When you work with data obtained from big
endian system (for example Mac or some Unix OS-es) or using big
endian byte order because of some standard requirements (for example
IP or port numbers in network byte order) you can set the bit 1 to 1
in order to cause conversion when the data is read or written from
to the external media or the buffer.
Information: Most machines today use little endian byte order
(less significant byte first) and these features are mostly useful
when working with standards that require the numeric data to be
stored in big endian byte order (most significant byte first). So,
except in administrative, format conversion or utility scripts these
features rarely need your attention. However the developers of
business applications that may use some external data sources
(import/export files for example) are advised to check if these
files/data are supposed to be read/written by other applications
working on big endian systems such as Macintosh and see if a
conversion (or option for it) would be needed to support them.
Objects that use byte order flags: SFFilter,
SFBinaryData.
