On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 7:40 PM, John  Holden <johnh at psych.usyd.edu.au> wrote:
>
>> Well I found the ar specification (in ar.5 not ar.1).
>>
>>              struct ar_hdr {
>>                      char      ar_name[14];
>>                      long      ar_date;
>>                      char      ar_uid;
>>                      char      ar_gid;
>>                      int       ar_mode;
>>                      long      ar_size;
>>              };
>
> Endian should not be a problem on a Intel/AMD processor. More likely your C
> compiler is padding out the array for alignment. Try a '-fpack-struct' or
> more safely, read the elements individually rather than a structure.
>

In the PDP-11 long is 32 bits, int 16 bits.   And the PDP-11 is
determinedly little-endian if you stick to integers.

They got floating-point software right in 1971, but somebody screwed
up the word order when building FP hardware, which led to the
middle-endian mess.

   carl
--
   carl lowenstein         marine physical lab     u.c. san diego
                                                clowenstein at ucsd.edu