detect endianness of a binary with python

[Holger brunck]

>> Something like the "file" utility for linux would be very helpfull.
>>
>> Any help is appreciated.

>You're going to have to describe in detail what's in the file before
>anybody can help.

We are creating inside our buildsystem for an embedded system  a cram filesystem
image. Later on inside our build process we have to check the endianness,
because it could be Little Endian or big endian (arm or ppc).

The output of the "file" tool is for a little endian cramfs image:
<ourImage>: Linux Compressed ROM File System data, little endian size 1875968
version #2 sorted_dirs CRC 0x8721dfc0, edition 0, 462 blocks, 10 files

It would be possible to execute
ret = os.system("file <ourImage> | grep "little endian")
and evaluate the return code.
But I don't like to evaluate a piped system command. If there is an way without
using the os.system command this would be great.

Best regards
Holger