Andrey Petrov <petrov@netbsd.org> said;

> > It can be written in endian-neutral way by declaring a 32bit quantity of
> > unsigned long and do explicit bitmasking and shifting.  The solution
> > is cheap and elegant, removing endian puzzles forever.
> 
> Generated code will be less efficient thou.

As far as MIPS instruction set concern, good compilers will produce
straight LOAD/STORE insn sequence even if you see &0xFF... and
<< >> on programs.   Alpha does more fancy play there.

Toru Nishimura/ALKYL Technology