endianh

Endianh is a term used in computing to describe the handling of endianness across heterogeneous systems. It refers to the set of practices that ensure multi-byte data is interpreted consistently when moving between architectures with different byte orders. The concept is not a formal standard but a shorthand found in technical writing to discuss how software achieves portability and data integrity in cross-platform environments.

In practice, endianh covers data serialization, network communication, file formats, and inter-process interaction, where an on-wire or canonical representation is defined independently of the host’s native byte order. Techniques commonly associated with endianh include runtime detection of endianness, explicit byte-swapping routines, and the use of defined network or wire formats to establish a consistent data layout across systems. Many programming languages offer built-in or standard library utilities to assist with endianness conversion, such as byte order conversion functions in C (for example, htonl, htons, ntohl, ntohs) or equivalent facilities in other languages. Higher-level serialization libraries and protocols often provide endianness-agnostic interfaces that abstract away the details from application developers.

The term endianh does not correspond to a formal standard or protocol; rather, it denotes a family of techniques aimed at portability and correctness when data is exchanged between machines with different architectures. See also Endianness, Byte order, Byte swap, Data serialization, Network byte order.