Does MATLAB assume endian?

I have a piece of code that I wrote to read the MAT-File based on the pdf found here: https://www.mathworks.com/help/pdf_doc/matlab/matfile_format.pdf I have never tried to read a MAT file on my own machine because I have MATLAB and never saw the need. However I tried it recently and was surprised when the code needed to byte swap. The "MI" Endian test resulted in "IM" on my machine. I saved the file from MATLAB 2016a on my local machine (Win 7 i7-4900) and then opened with an executable compiled on this same machine with VC2013.

I am hoping that I am grossly misunderstanding endian and what is going on. Can someone explain?

[Steven Lord]

Did you write your own functions to read the data or did you use the library functions MathWorks provides for accessing data in a MAT-file?

[Matt]

I wrote my own. The target machine doesn't have MATLAB installed. I supposed I could just copy the source and library files over.

[Rik]

You can also use Octave (the zip version is portable). One of it's few advantages is that you can run most Matlab functions on machines without Matlab, but using it might be overkill for your case. (Note that I am not advocating for replacing Matlab. It has has way more functions, way better support, this forum, and is often more than 10x faster in running advanced functions. Octave just ahs the advantage of being free.)