Peter Pichler wrote:
> James Kuyper Jr. wrote:
>
> > There are 32! possible orderings of 32 bits, though only a small number
> > of those orderings are actually used. However, I've read that of the 12
> > possible orderings of the 4 bytes underlying a 4-byte integer, 8 of them
> > are in actual use.
>
> ITYM 24 possible orderings. Just like there are 32! possibilities with
> 32 bits, there are 4! possibilities with 4 bytes. 4! = 24.

You're right. Also, I'm not too sure about the number that are in
actual use; I've seen what claimed to be a definitive list, and I
think the number of entries in that list was 8, but I'm not sure where
to find that list, and I'm not willing to swear on the accuracy of my
memory. The important point, of course, is that it's a lot larger than
2.