One way is to write a C program that goes:
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
unsigned int i = 1;
char *c = (char*)&i;
if (*c)
printf("Little endian");
else
printf("Big endian");
return 0;
}
Another way is to run a one-liner in your terminal. It goes:
[ "$(echo hi | iconv -t utf-16 | od -N2 -An -t x1 | tr -d ' ')" = "fffe" ] && echo "Little Endian" || echo "Big Endian"
It takes advantage of the magic number 0xFEFF that UTF-16 encoding adds before any text. Look here for more info.
