Is there a system command, in Linux, that reports the endianness?

Question

Does anyone know of a command that reports whether a system is Big Endian or Little Endian, or is the best option a technique like this using Perl or a string of commands?

Perl

# little
$ perl -MConfig -e 'print "$Config{byteorder}\n";'
12345678

# big
$ perl -MConfig -e 'print "$Config{byteorder}\n";'
87654321

od | awk

# little
$ echo -n I | od -to2 | awk 'FNR==1{ print substr($2,6,1)}'
1

# big
$ echo -n I | od -to2 | awk 'FNR==1{ print substr($2,6,1)}'
0

References

• Perl Config documentation - byteorder

Answer 1

lscpu

The lscpu command shows (among other things):

Byte Order:            Little Endian

Systems this is known to work on

• CentOS 6
• Ubuntu (12.04, 12.10, 13.04, 13.10, 14.04)
• Fedora (17,18,19)
• ArchLinux 2012+
• Linux Mint Debian (therefore assuming Debian testing as well).

Systems this is known to not work on

• Fedora 14
• CentOS 5 (assuming RHEL5 because of this)

Why the apparent differences across distros?

After much digging I found out why. It looks like version util-linux version 2.19 was the first version that included the feature where lscpu shows you the output reporting your system's Endianness.

As a test I compiled both version 2.18 and 2.19 on my Fedora 14 system and the output below shows the differences:

util-linux 2.18

$ util-linux-ng-2.18/sys-utils/lscpu 
Architecture:          x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
CPU(s):                4
Thread(s) per core:    2
Core(s) per socket:    2
CPU socket(s):         1
NUMA node(s):          1
Vendor ID:             GenuineIntel
CPU family:            6
Model:                 37
Stepping:              5
CPU MHz:               1199.000
Virtualization:        VT-x
L1d cache:             32K
L1i cache:             32K
L2 cache:              256K
L3 cache:              3072K
NUMA node0 CPU(s):     0-3

util-linux 2.19

$ util-linux-2.19/sys-utils/lscpu 
Architecture:          x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:            Little Endian
CPU(s):                4
On-line CPU(s) list:   0-3
Thread(s) per core:    2
Core(s) per socket:    2
CPU socket(s):         1
NUMA node(s):          1
Vendor ID:             GenuineIntel
CPU family:            6
Model:                 37
Stepping:              5
CPU MHz:               2667.000
BogoMIPS:              5320.02
Virtualization:        VT-x
L1d cache:             32K
L1i cache:             32K
L2 cache:              256K
L3 cache:              3072K
NUMA node0 CPU(s):     0-3

The above versions were downloaded from the kernel.org website.

• util-linux-ng-2.18.tar.bz2
• util-linux-2.19.tar.gz

Answer 2

Using python:

$ python -c "import sys;print sys.byteorder"
little

or:

printf '\1' | od -dAn
1

where 1 is for little endian and 00256 for big endian.

Or using a shorter perl version:

$ perl -V:byteorder
byteorder='12345678';

Answer 3

One method I found on Debian/Ubuntu systems is to run this command:

$ dpkg-architecture
DEB_BUILD_ARCH=amd64
DEB_BUILD_ARCH_BITS=64
DEB_BUILD_ARCH_CPU=amd64
DEB_BUILD_ARCH_ENDIAN=little
DEB_BUILD_ARCH_OS=linux
DEB_BUILD_GNU_CPU=x86_64
DEB_BUILD_GNU_SYSTEM=linux-gnu
DEB_BUILD_GNU_TYPE=x86_64-linux-gnu
DEB_BUILD_MULTIARCH=x86_64-linux-gnu
DEB_HOST_ARCH=amd64
DEB_HOST_ARCH_BITS=64
DEB_HOST_ARCH_CPU=amd64
DEB_HOST_ARCH_ENDIAN=little
DEB_HOST_ARCH_OS=linux
DEB_HOST_GNU_CPU=x86_64
DEB_HOST_GNU_SYSTEM=linux-gnu
DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE=x86_64-linux-gnu
DEB_HOST_MULTIARCH=x86_64-linux-gnu

This will show you the words little or big depending on the architecture your system is comprised of:

$ dpkg-architecture | grep -i end
DEB_BUILD_ARCH_ENDIAN=little
DEB_HOST_ARCH_ENDIAN=little

Answer 4

A POSIX Shell & C solution:

cat << EOF > foo.c

#include <endian.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
  printf("Byte Order: ");
  if (BYTE_ORDER == LITTLE_ENDIAN) 
    printf("little");
  else {
    if (BYTE_ORDER == BIG_ENDIAN)
      printf("big");
    else
      printf("unknown");
  }
  printf(" endian.\n");
  return 0;
}
EOF

gcc -D__USE_POSIX foo.c
./a.out

Answer 5

If you are on a system that does not have endian.h:

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
  int test = 0;
  char *bytes = (char *) &test;
  *bytes = 0x1;

  printf("Byte Order: ");
  if (test == 1){
    printf("little");
  }
  else {
      printf("big");
  }
  printf(" endian.\n");
  return 0;
}