Section A.6. Byte Ordering

A.6. Byte Ordering

The byte-ordering difference between the x86 and PowerPC platforms, along with the resultant caveats and handling approaches, are discussed in detail in Apple's documentation. A noteworthy point is that the HFS+ file system uses big-endian ordering for storing multibyte integer values.

The PowerPC version of hfsdebug, the accompanying program to Chapter 12, can also be used on x86-based computers, courtesy of Rosetta. Note that on the x86, hfsdebug has to explicitly swap the journal data it reads from disk.