Data Representations

Computers store data as different variable types, e.g. integer, floating point, complex, etc.
Different machines have different wordlengths, e.g. 4-byte ints on a 32-bit machine (Pentium), 8-byte ints on a 64-bit machine (Alpha).
This makes (binary) data non-portable.

Computers store data as different variable types, e.g. integer, floating point, complex, etc.