James Giles wrote:

I would rather not argue, either, but I don't mind
constructive discussion.

I prefer big endian for computing hardware, and for assembly
programmers you always know the size of the field you are
operating on.

For Fortran, where the actual widths of integer variables
are system dependent, little endian does seem to make more
sense. As you say, the decision is not dependent on the
underlying hardware. For little endian, the numerical
values (keeping away from the sign bit) are independent
of the width.

If one had something like the PL/I BIT string data type,
then things would be different. (I know some here have
discussed bit strings, I don't remember who was for
or against them.)

Little endian CHARACTER variables would seem too
different from the way other languages work, and it is
a little late now to change them.

-- glen