change-endian-ness.md

Change the Endian-ness of a File

If you just need to change the endian-ness of INT16 or UINT16 data then you can use the dd utility on Mac or Linux:

dd if=original.txt of=swapped.txt conv=swab

The conv=swab part means "use the conversion SWAp Bytes".

Then you can check the results with the xxd utility:

xxd original.txt
xxd swapped.txt

If you need to alter 32-bit data you can use the following:

hexdump -v -e '1/4 "%08x"' somefile.txt

The 16-bit variation of this technique is:

hexdump -v -e '1/2 "%04x"' somefile.txt