1.3.7 Byte Ordering

Some computer architectures number bytes in a binary word from left to right, which is referred to as big-endian. The bit diagram for this documentation is big-endian. Other architectures number the bytes in a binary word from right to left, which is referred to as little-endian. The underlying file format enumerations, objects, and records are little-endian.

Using big-endian and little-endian methods, the number 0x12345678 would be stored as shown in the following table.

Unless otherwise specified, all data in the Word Binary File Format is stored in little-endian format.