On Thu, 2 Sep 1999 STEPHANE_MEIER@Non-HP-Switzerland-om1.om.hp.com wrote:
> The big endianness was purely arbitrary. I believe the network order is 
> big endian without a formal proof - anyone to confim this?

I don't know, it's not in the man page, and no one I ask knows.  If you
want to write portable code, use network order.  It will be easier to
maintain instead of your code since it doesn't require any ifdefs.  It
will be simpler to support since people will not need to determine the
endianess of their computer before compiling.

moo