Java™ Platform
Standard Ed. 6

java.nio
Class ByteOrder

java.lang.Object
  extended by java.nio.ByteOrder

public final class ByteOrder
extends Object

A typesafe enumeration for byte orders.

Since:
1.4

Field Summary
static ByteOrder BIG_ENDIAN
          Constant denoting big-endian byte order.
static ByteOrder LITTLE_ENDIAN
          Constant denoting little-endian byte order.
 
Method Summary
static ByteOrder nativeOrder()
          Retrieves the native byte order of the underlying platform.
 String toString()
          Constructs a string describing this object.
 
Methods inherited from class java.lang.Object
clone, equals, finalize, getClass, hashCode, notify, notifyAll, wait, wait, wait
 

Field Detail

BIG_ENDIAN

public static final ByteOrder BIG_ENDIAN
Constant denoting big-endian byte order. In this order, the bytes of a multibyte value are ordered from most significant to least significant.


LITTLE_ENDIAN

public static final ByteOrder LITTLE_ENDIAN
Constant denoting little-endian byte order. In this order, the bytes of a multibyte value are ordered from least significant to most significant.

Method Detail

nativeOrder

public static ByteOrder nativeOrder()
Retrieves the native byte order of the underlying platform.

This method is defined so that performance-sensitive Java code can allocate direct buffers with the same byte order as the hardware. Native code libraries are often more efficient when such buffers are used.

Returns:
The native byte order of the hardware upon which this Java virtual machine is running

toString

public String toString()
Constructs a string describing this object.

This method returns the string "BIG_ENDIAN" for BIG_ENDIAN and "LITTLE_ENDIAN" for LITTLE_ENDIAN.

Overrides:
toString in class Object
Returns:
The specified string

Java™ Platform
Standard Ed. 6

Submit a bug or feature
For further API reference and developer documentation, see Java SE Developer Documentation. That documentation contains more detailed, developer-targeted descriptions, with conceptual overviews, definitions of terms, workarounds, and working code examples.

Copyright 2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Use is subject to license terms. Also see the documentation redistribution policy.