Implement Endianness Detection

EasyPython

Problem

When debugging an embedded component used with HCLTech engineering tools, you may receive a 32-bit integer and the four bytes observed in memory. Determine whether those bytes represent the integer in little-endian or big-endian order.

Return "little" if the bytes match little-endian representation, "big" if they match big-endian representation, and "unknown" if they match neither or both representations. Matching both representations can occur when the byte sequence reads the same forward and backward, such as [18, 52, 52, 18].

Formal Specification

Implement detect_endianness(value, memory_bytes).

value is an integer from 0 through 2^32 - 1.
memory_bytes is a list of exactly four integers, each from 0 through 255.
The function returns one of the strings "little", "big", or "unknown".
Do not inspect the host machine's actual byte order. The result must depend only on the provided inputs.

Constraints

0 <= value <= 2^32 - 1
len(memory_bytes) == 4
0 <= memory_bytes[i] <= 255
The input may represent little-endian, big-endian, neither, or both

Function Signature

def detect_endianness(value, memory_bytes):

Formal Specification

Implement detect_endianness(value, memory_bytes).

value is an integer from 0 through 2^32 - 1.
memory_bytes is a list of exactly four integers, each from 0 through 255.
The function returns one of the strings "little", "big", or "unknown".
Do not inspect the host machine's actual byte order. The result must depend only on the provided inputs.