If you know the raw data is little-endian, you can convert it to the current local endianness (without knowing what that is) using:

my $raw = "\x01\x02\x03\x04";;
my $local = unpack 'L<', $raw;;
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Then you can use it as you would any other local variable:

printf "%08x\n", $local;;
04030201
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Ditto, if you know the raw bytes are big-endian:

my $raw = "\x01\x02\x03\x04";;
my $local = unpack 'L>', $raw;;
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And now when your print it:

printf "%08x\n", $local;;
01020304
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The point is that once you've done the unpack, it will have been converted to the local format and from that point on you need not consider the endianess; just use it and the code will do the right thing.

and from that point on you need not consider the endianess . just use it and the code will do the right thing.

Did I mention I'm after 00204110 ? Does above sprintf return 00204110 on non-win32 machines?

Is your machine not big or little endian? That's pretty rare hardware.

You can ask for the values in network order, or worst case, you can unpack it by bytes, and shuffle them manually.

Does above sprintf return 00204110 on non-win32 machines?

No. Because your raw input isn't 00204110 as either big-endian or little-endian:

$raw = "\1\24\2\0";;

$local = unpack 'L>', $raw;;
printf "%08x\n", $local;;
01140200

$local = unpack 'L<', $raw;;
printf "%08x\n", $local;;
00021401
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I don't know of any machine that would represent that hex value with your input bit pattern.

In fact, I would say it was impossible, because it would mean that the nybbles of the 3rd byte (and only the 3rd byte) would be reversed; and no machine does that!

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Very strange question. Function "sprintf" (in C library) interprets the numbers according to the endiannes of the machine. If you put the number in wrong endiannes, then the output of sprintf shall be wrong. I mean, the output of sprintf is text and this text is supposed to be read from left to right.

How can this be "portable" or "not portable"?

Normally one needs to worry only about converting sequences of bytes received from external source to the numbers as program understands them. For that the "unpack" function is used. If you know that your external source feeds you with numbers presented as bytes in big-endian order, then you use "N", or "n", or "L>" etc. If you know that it is little-endian, then you use "V", or "v", or "L<" etc. If you don't know what order was used, then you are in trouble :) Once you handle this part correctly, you don't need to worry about sprintf or any other system function anymore.

Internal numbers will always be handled "correctly" by sprintf. The output of sprintf shall be matching to the big-endian representation of the provided number.

Endianness is not a factor.

sprintf %d, %x, %o and %b will always print the most significant digit of the number on the left.

On all platforms,
sprintf '%d', 4660 is 4660
sprintf '%X', 4660 is 1234
sprintf '%o', 4660 is 11064
sprintf '%b', 4660 is 1001000110100