A NativeEndian cursor would be useful about bitvec HOT 2 CLOSED

I've spent all day trying to determine what a correct answer to this objectively reasonable question is. I've decided that LittleEndian is probably the more acceptable candidate to be considered "native" than is BigEndian, but both orders have pretty good reason to be used. Ultimately, the specific order doesn't matter for memory-only cases, and if you need to create an I/O buffer, you are already following a specification that forces you to pick one.

I am putting this article here for my records; you also may find it interesting: *Reading bits in far too many ways, part 1.

At this time, I believe I have been convinced to switch the default Cursor to LittleEndian; I have not yet been persuaded to name either of them "Native", but I am weighing renaming both of them away from the term "endian", to be MsbFirst and LsbFirst.

Unfortunately I don't think I can add a NativeEndian name at this time; I will leave this issue open and keep thinking on it until I come to a firmer answer.

from bitvec.

I've ultimately decided that you are correct. The 0.16 release will switch to a Local cursor and a Word fundamental, which are aliased to the target machine's endianness and CPU word size. I cannot give a release date at this time, as 0.16 is bundling a lot of refinement work.

I'm going to mark this issue as closed in the commit to master that adds those aliases, and I will comment again when it reaches crates.io.

from bitvec.