I always struggled with bitwise operators and their practical usage. I found an example online for something I am doing in C++ and was wondering what is going on there.
for (int i = 0; i < size / 2; ++i)
{
queue->push(temp[i] & 0xff);
queue->push((temp[i] >> 8) & 0xff);
}
I know roughly what the "And" and the "Shift" operator is doing, but how does that affect the temp variable and the result. Anyone can help understand that?
The first statement, temp[i] & 0xff, extracts the lower 8 bits because 0xff = 1111 1111.
The second statement, (temp[i] >> 8) & 0xff , first shifts the bits in temp[i] to the right by 8 times, so the bits from position 8 to position 15 will now occupy bits from position 0 to position 7. And when you do the bitwise & with 0xFF, you get the new bits from position 0 to position 7.
For example -
Let's say, temp[i] = 0x01020304
then temp[i] & 0xff = 0x04
and (temp[i] >> 8) & 0xff = 0x03
The temp variable is not affected in either operation. The first logical operation is isolating the low order 8 bits of the temp variable and pushing them onto the queue, the second operation is isolating the next 8 bits (numbers 8 through 15) and is pushing them onto the queue. These two operations are repeated size/2 times.
My suggestion: Learn to love std::bitset. It comes in handy quite often when juggling with bits. Consider this code:
#include <bitset>
#include <iostream>
int main() {
unsigned long x = 12345678;
std::bitset<32> a{ x} ;
std::bitset<32> b{ x & 0xff };
std::bitset<32> c{ (x >> 8) & 0xff };
std::bitset<32> d{ 0xff };
std::cout << a << '\n' << b << '\n' << c << '\n' << d;
}
Its output is (comments added)
00000000101111000110000101001110 // x
00000000000000000000000001001110 // x & 0xff
00000000000000000000000001100001 // (x>>8) & 0xff
00000000000000000000000011111111 // 0xff
So what is happening here is...
0xff is an integer literal with the 8 lower bits set. The bitwise and & allows you to mask bits, ie the result has those bits set that are set in both operands. The shift operator >> shifts the bits by the specified amount (8 in this case).
In total, your code first pushes the first 8 bits and then the next 8 bits into the queue.
Related
What would be the fastest way possible to reverse the nibbles (e.g digits) of a hexadecimal number in C++?
Here's an example of what I mean : 0x12345 -> 0x54321
Here's what I already have:
unsigned int rotation (unsigned int hex) {
unsigned int result = 0;
while (hex) {
result = (result << 4) | (hex & 0xF);
hex >>= 4;
}
return result;
}
This problem can be split into two parts:
Reverse the nibbles of an integer. Reverse the bytes, and swap the nibble within each byte.
Shift the reversed result right by some amount to adjust for the "variable length". There are std::countl_zero(x) & -4 (number of leading zeroes, rounded down to a multiple of 4) leading zero bits that are part of the leading zeroes in hexadecimal, shifting right by that amount makes them not participate in the reversal.
For example, using some of the new functions from <bit>:
#include <stdint.h>
#include <bit>
uint32_t reverse_nibbles(uint32_t x) {
// reverse bytes
uint32_t r = std::byteswap(x);
// swap adjacent nibbles
r = ((r & 0x0F0F0F0F) << 4) | ((r >> 4) & 0x0F0F0F0F);
// adjust for variable-length of input
int len_of_zero_prefix = std::countl_zero(x) & -4;
return r >> len_of_zero_prefix;
}
That requires C++23 for std::byteswap which may be a bit optimistic, you can substitute it with some other byteswap.
Easily adaptable to uint64_t too.
i would do it without loops based on the assumption that the input is 32 bits
result = (hex & 0x0000000f) << 28
| (hex & 0x000000f0) << 20
| (hex & 0x00000f00) << 12
....
dont know if faster, but I find it more readable
Firstly, if anyone has a better title for me, let me know.
Here is an example of the process I am trying to automate with C++
I have an array of values that appear in this format:
9C07 9385 9BC7 00 9BC3 9BC7 9385
I need to convert them to binary and then convert every 5 bits to decimal like so with the last bit being a flag:
I'll do this with only the first word here.
9C07
10011 | 10000 | 00011 | 1
19 | 16 | 3
These are actually x,y,z coordinates and the final bit determines the order they are in a '0' would make it x=19 y=16 z=3 and '1' is x=16 y=3 z=19
I already have a buffer filled with these hex values, but I have no idea where to go from here.
I assume these are integer literals, not strings?
The way to do this is with bitwise right shift (>>) and bitwise AND (&)
#include <cstdint>
struct Coordinate {
std::uint8_t x;
std::uint8_t y;
std::uint8_t z;
constexpr Coordinate(std::uint16_t n) noexcept
{
if (n & 1) { // flag
x = (n >> 6) & 0x1F; // 1 1111
y = (n >> 1) & 0x1F;
z = n >> 11;
} else {
x = n >> 11;
y = (n >> 6) & 0x1F;
z = (n >> 1) & 0x1F;
}
}
};
The following code would extract the three coordinates and the flag from the 16 least significant bits of value (ie. its least significant word).
int flag = value & 1; // keep only the least significant bit
value >>= 1; // shift right by one bit
int third_integer = value & 0x1f; // keep only the five least significant bits
value >>= 5; // shift right by five bits
int second_integer = value & 0x1f; // keep only the five least significant bits
value >>= 5; // shift right by five bits
int first_integer = value & 0x1f; // keep only the five least significant bits
value >>= 5; // shift right by five bits (only useful if there are other words in "value")
What you need is most likely some loop doing this on each word of your array.
I'm having a little trouble grabbing n bits from a byte.
I have an unsigned integer. Let's say our number in hex is 0x2A, which is 42 in decimal. In binary it looks like this: 0010 1010. How would I grab the first 5 bits which are 00101 and the next 3 bits which are 010, and place them into separate integers?
If anyone could help me that would be great! I know how to extract from one byte which is to simply do
int x = (number >> (8*n)) & 0xff // n being the # byte
which I saw on another post on stack overflow, but I wasn't sure on how to get separate bits out of the byte. If anyone could help me out, that'd be great! Thanks!
Integers are represented inside a machine as a sequence of bits; fortunately for us humans, programming languages provide a mechanism to show us these numbers in decimal (or hexadecimal), but that does not alter their internal representation.
You should review the bitwise operators &, |, ^ and ~ as well as the shift operators << and >>, which will help you understand how to solve problems like this.
The last 3 bits of the integer are:
x & 0x7
The five bits starting from the eight-last bit are:
x >> 3 // all but the last three bits
& 0x1F // the last five bits.
"grabbing" parts of an integer type in C works like this:
You shift the bits you want to the lowest position.
You use & to mask the bits you want - ones means "copy this bit", zeros mean "ignore"
So, in you example. Let's say we have a number int x = 42;
first 5 bits:
(x >> 3) & ((1 << 5)-1);
or
(x >> 3) & 31;
To fetch the lower three bits:
(x >> 0) & ((1 << 3)-1)
or:
x & 7;
Say you want hi bits from the top, and lo bits from the bottom. (5 and 3 in your example)
top = (n >> lo) & ((1 << hi) - 1)
bottom = n & ((1 << lo) - 1)
Explanation:
For the top, first get rid of the lower bits (shift right), then mask the remaining with an "all ones" mask (if you have a binary number like 0010000, subtracting one results 0001111 - the same number of 1s as you had 0-s in the original number).
For the bottom it's the same, just don't have to care with the initial shifting.
top = (42 >> 3) & ((1 << 5) - 1) = 5 & (32 - 1) = 5 = 00101b
bottom = 42 & ((1 << 3) - 1) = 42 & (8 - 1) = 2 = 010b
You could use bitfields for this. Bitfields are special structs where you can specify variables in bits.
typedef struct {
unsigned char a:5;
unsigned char b:3;
} my_bit_t;
unsigned char c = 0x42;
my_bit_t * n = &c;
int first = n->a;
int sec = n->b;
Bit fields are described in more detail at http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave/C/node13.html#SECTION001320000000000000000
The charm of bit fields is, that you do not have to deal with shift operators etc. The notation is quite easy. As always with manipulating bits there is a portability issue.
int x = (number >> 3) & 0x1f;
will give you an integer where the last 5 bits are the 8-4 bits of number and zeros in the other bits.
Similarly,
int y = number & 0x7;
will give you an integer with the last 3 bits set the last 3 bits of number and the zeros in the rest.
just get rid of the 8* in your code.
int input = 42;
int high3 = input >> 5;
int low5 = input & (32 - 1); // 32 = 2^5
bool isBit3On = input & 4; // 4 = 2^(3-1)
I'm attempting to implement circular bit-shifting in C++. It kind of works, except after a certain point I get a bunch of zeroes.
for (int n=0;n<12;n++) {
unsigned char x=0x0f;
x=((x<<n)|(x>>(8-n))); //chars are 8 bits
cout<<hex<<"0x"<<(int)x<<endl;
}
My output is:
0xf
0x1e
0x3c
0x78
0xf0
0xe1
0xc3
0x87
0xf
0x0
0x0
0x0
As you can see, I start getting 0x0's instead of the expected 0x1e, 0x3c, etc.
If I expand the for loop to iterate 60 times or so, the numbers come back correctly (after a bunch of zeroes.)
I'm assuming that a char houses a big space, and the "gaps" of unused data are zeroes. My understanding is a bit limited, so any suggestions would be appreciated. Is there a way to toss out those zeroes?
Shifting by a negative amount is undefined behavior.
You loop from 0 to 12, but you have an 8 - n in your shifts. So that will go negative.
If you want to handle n > 8, you'll need to take a modulus by 8. (assuming you want 8-bit circular shift.)
for (int n=0; n < 12; n++) {
unsigned char x = 0x0f;
int shift = n % 8; // Wrap modulus
x = ((x << shift) | (x >> (8 - shift))); //chars are 8 bits
cout << hex << "0x" << (int)x << endl;
}
Shifting a byte left by more than 7 will always result in 0.
Also, shifting by a negative amount is not defined.
In order to fix this you have to limit the shift to the size of the type.
Basically:
unsigned char x = 0xf;
int shift = n&7;
x=((x<<shift)|(x>>(8-shift)))
Assuming I have a byte b with the binary value of 11111111
How do I for example read a 3 bit integer value starting at the second bit or write a four bit integer value starting at the fifth bit?
Some 2+ years after I asked this question I'd like to explain it the way I'd want it explained back when I was still a complete newb and would be most beneficial to people who want to understand the process.
First of all, forget the "11111111" example value, which is not really all that suited for the visual explanation of the process. So let the initial value be 10111011 (187 decimal) which will be a little more illustrative of the process.
1 - how to read a 3 bit value starting from the second bit:
___ <- those 3 bits
10111011
The value is 101, or 5 in decimal, there are 2 possible ways to get it:
mask and shift
In this approach, the needed bits are first masked with the value 00001110 (14 decimal) after which it is shifted in place:
___
10111011 AND
00001110 =
00001010 >> 1 =
___
00000101
The expression for this would be: (value & 14) >> 1
shift and mask
This approach is similar, but the order of operations is reversed, meaning the original value is shifted and then masked with 00000111 (7) to only leave the last 3 bits:
___
10111011 >> 1
___
01011101 AND
00000111
00000101
The expression for this would be: (value >> 1) & 7
Both approaches involve the same amount of complexity, and therefore will not differ in performance.
2 - how to write a 3 bit value starting from the second bit:
In this case, the initial value is known, and when this is the case in code, you may be able to come up with a way to set the known value to another known value which uses less operations, but in reality this is rarely the case, most of the time the code will know neither the initial value, nor the one which is to be written.
This means that in order for the new value to be successfully "spliced" into byte, the target bits must be set to zero, after which the shifted value is "spliced" in place, which is the first step:
___
10111011 AND
11110001 (241) =
10110001 (masked original value)
The second step is to shift the value we want to write in the 3 bits, say we want to change that from 101 (5) to 110 (6)
___
00000110 << 1 =
___
00001100 (shifted "splice" value)
The third and final step is to splice the masked original value with the shifted "splice" value:
10110001 OR
00001100 =
___
10111101
The expression for the whole process would be: (value & 241) | (6 << 1)
Bonus - how to generate the read and write masks:
Naturally, using a binary to decimal converter is far from elegant, especially in the case of 32 and 64 bit containers - decimal values get crazy big. It is possible to easily generate the masks with expressions, which the compiler can efficiently resolve during compilation:
read mask for "mask and shift": ((1 << fieldLength) - 1) << (fieldIndex - 1), assuming that the index at the first bit is 1 (not zero)
read mask for "shift and mask": (1 << fieldLength) - 1 (index does not play a role here since it is always shifted to the first bit
write mask : just invert the "mask and shift" mask expression with the ~ operator
How does it work (with the 3bit field beginning at the second bit from the examples above)?
00000001 << 3
00001000 - 1
00000111 << 1
00001110 ~ (read mask)
11110001 (write mask)
The same examples apply to wider integers and arbitrary bit width and position of the fields, with the shift and mask values varying accordingly.
Also note that the examples assume unsigned integer, which is what you want to use in order to use integers as portable bit-field alternative (regular bit-fields are in no way guaranteed by the standard to be portable), both left and right shift insert a padding 0, which is not the case with right shifting a signed integer.
Even easier:
Using this set of macros (but only in C++ since it relies on the generation of member functions):
#define GETMASK(index, size) ((((size_t)1 << (size)) - 1) << (index))
#define READFROM(data, index, size) (((data) & GETMASK((index), (size))) >> (index))
#define WRITETO(data, index, size, value) ((data) = (((data) & (~GETMASK((index), (size)))) | (((value) << (index)) & (GETMASK((index), (size))))))
#define FIELD(data, name, index, size) \
inline decltype(data) name() const { return READFROM(data, index, size); } \
inline void set_##name(decltype(data) value) { WRITETO(data, index, size, value); }
You could go for something as simple as:
struct A {
uint bitData;
FIELD(bitData, one, 0, 1)
FIELD(bitData, two, 1, 2)
};
And have the bit fields implemented as properties you can easily access:
A a;
a.set_two(3);
cout << a.two();
Replace decltype with gcc's typeof pre-C++11.
You need to shift and mask the value, so for example...
If you want to read the first two bits, you just need to mask them off like so:
int value = input & 0x3;
If you want to offset it you need to shift right N bits and then mask off the bits you want:
int value = (intput >> 1) & 0x3;
To read three bits like you asked in your question.
int value = (input >> 1) & 0x7;
just use this and feelfree:
#define BitVal(data,y) ( (data>>y) & 1) /** Return Data.Y value **/
#define SetBit(data,y) data |= (1 << y) /** Set Data.Y to 1 **/
#define ClearBit(data,y) data &= ~(1 << y) /** Clear Data.Y to 0 **/
#define TogleBit(data,y) (data ^=BitVal(y)) /** Togle Data.Y value **/
#define Togle(data) (data =~data ) /** Togle Data value **/
for example:
uint8_t number = 0x05; //0b00000101
uint8_t bit_2 = BitVal(number,2); // bit_2 = 1
uint8_t bit_1 = BitVal(number,1); // bit_1 = 0
SetBit(number,1); // number = 0x07 => 0b00000111
ClearBit(number,2); // number =0x03 => 0b0000011
You have to do a shift and mask (AND) operation.
Let b be any byte and p be the index (>= 0) of the bit from which you want to take n bits (>= 1).
First you have to shift right b by p times:
x = b >> p;
Second you have to mask the result with n ones:
mask = (1 << n) - 1;
y = x & mask;
You can put everything in a macro:
#define TAKE_N_BITS_FROM(b, p, n) ((b) >> (p)) & ((1 << (n)) - 1)
"How do I for example read a 3 bit integer value starting at the second bit?"
int number = // whatever;
uint8_t val; // uint8_t is the smallest data type capable of holding 3 bits
val = (number & (1 << 2 | 1 << 3 | 1 << 4)) >> 2;
(I assumed that "second bit" is bit #2, i. e. the third bit really.)
To read bytes use std::bitset
const int bits_in_byte = 8;
char myChar = 's';
cout << bitset<sizeof(myChar) * bits_in_byte>(myChar);
To write you need to use bit-wise operators such as & ^ | & << >>. make sure to learn what they do.
For example to have 00100100 you need to set the first bit to 1, and shift it with the << >> operators 5 times. if you want to continue writing you just continue to set the first bit and shift it. it's very much like an old typewriter: you write, and shift the paper.
For 00100100: set the first bit to 1, shift 5 times, set the first bit to 1, and shift 2 times:
const int bits_in_byte = 8;
char myChar = 0;
myChar = myChar | (0x1 << 5 | 0x1 << 2);
cout << bitset<sizeof(myChar) * bits_in_byte>(myChar);
int x = 0xFF; //your number - 11111111
How do I for example read a 3 bit integer value starting at the second bit
int y = x & ( 0x7 << 2 ) // 0x7 is 111
// and you shift it 2 to the left
If you keep grabbing bits from your data, you might want to use a bitfield. You'll just have to set up a struct and load it with only ones and zeroes:
struct bitfield{
unsigned int bit : 1
}
struct bitfield *bitstream;
then later on load it like this (replacing char with int or whatever data you are loading):
long int i;
int j, k;
unsigned char c, d;
bitstream=malloc(sizeof(struct bitfield)*charstreamlength*sizeof(char));
for (i=0; i<charstreamlength; i++){
c=charstream[i];
for(j=0; j < sizeof(char)*8; j++){
d=c;
d=d>>(sizeof(char)*8-j-1);
d=d<<(sizeof(char)*8-1);
k=d;
if(k==0){
bitstream[sizeof(char)*8*i + j].bit=0;
}else{
bitstream[sizeof(char)*8*i + j].bit=1;
}
}
}
Then access elements:
bitstream[bitpointer].bit=...
or
...=bitstream[bitpointer].bit
All of this is assuming are working on i86/64, not arm, since arm can be big or little endian.