In Java, multibyte data items or streams are stored in big endian order.
Using Java to write bytes directly to the wire will require byte-order transformation if the recipient talks in little endian. The same is true if you are reading directly from the wire from a sender who talks in little endian.
If you are using a byte array wrapped in ByteBuffer,
byte[] data = new byte[] { 12, 19, 83, 05, -05, 55, -55 };
ByteBuffer byteBuffer = ByteBuffer.wrap(data);
Transforming from big endian to little endian is easy,
byteBuffer.order(java.nio.ByteOrder.LITTLE_ENDIAN);
If you are unsure of the endianness of the underlying platform, just invoke the native order method.
java.nio.ByteOrder.nativeOrder();
Aside from streams, operands in classes that are above 1 byte in size are in big endian order.
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