Bit shifts and their logical operators - c++

This program below moves the last (junior) and the penultimate bytes variable i type int. I'm trying to understand why the programmer wrote this
i = (i & LEADING_TWO_BYTES_MASK) | ((i & PENULTIMATE_BYTE_MASK) >> 8) | ((i & LAST_BYTE_MASK) << 8);
Can anyone explain to me in plain English whats going on in the program below.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <cstdlib>
#define LAST_BYTE_MASK 255 //11111111
#define PENULTIMATE_BYTE_MASK 65280 //1111111100000000
#define LEADING_TWO_BYTES_MASK 4294901760 //11111111111111110000000000000000
int main(){
unsigned int i = 0;
printf("i = ");
scanf("%d", &i);
i = (i & LEADING_TWO_BYTES_MASK) | ((i & PENULTIMATE_BYTE_MASK) >> 8) | ((i & LAST_BYTE_MASK) << 8);
printf("i = %d", i);
system("pause");
}

Since you asked for plain english: He swaps the first and second bytes of an integer.

The expression is indeed a bit convoluted but in essence the author does this:
// Mask out relevant bytes
unsigned higher_order_bytes = i & LEADING_TWO_BYTES_MASK;
unsigned first_byte = i & LAST_BYTE_MASK;
unsigned second_byte = i & PENULTIMATE_BYTE_MASK;
// Switch positions:
unsigned first_to_second = first_byte << 8;
unsigned second_to_first = second_byte >> 8;
// Concatenate back together:
unsigned result = higher_order_bytes | first_to_second | second_to_first;
Incidentally, defining the masks using hexadecimal notation is more readable than using decimal. Furthermore, using #define here is misguided. Both C and C++ have const:
unsigned const LEADING_TWO_BYTES_MASK = 0xFFFF0000;
unsigned const PENULTIMATE_BYTE_MASK = 0xFF00;
unsigned const LAST_BYTE_MASK = 0xFF;
To understand this code you need to know what &, | and bit shifts are doing on the bit level.

It's more instructive to define your masks in hexadecimal rather than decimal, because then they correspond directly to the binary representations and it's easy to see which bits are on and off:
#define LAST 0xFF // all bits in the first byte are 1
#define PEN 0xFF00 // all bits in the second byte are 1
#define LEAD 0xFFFF0000 // all bits in the third and fourth bytes are 1
Then
i = (i & LEAD) // leave the first 2 bytes of the 32-bit integer the same
| ((i & PEN) >> 8) // take the 3rd byte and shift it 8 bits right
| ((i & LAST) << 8) // take the 4th byte and shift it 8 bits left
);
So the expression is swapping the two least significant bytes while leaving the two most significant bytes the same.

Related

Reverse nibbles of a hexadecimal number in C++

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

Efficiently removing lower half-byte in a byte array - C++

I have a long byte array and I want to remove the lower nibble (the lower 4 bits) of every byte and move the rest together such that the result occupies half the space as the input.
For example, if my input is 057ABC23, my output should be 07B2.
My current approach looks like this:
// in is unsigned char*
size_t outIdx = 0;
for(size_t i = 0; i < input_length; i += 8)
{
in[outIdx++] = (in[i ] & 0xF0) | (in[i + 1] >> 4);
in[outIdx++] = (in[i + 2] & 0xF0) | (in[i + 3] >> 4);
in[outIdx++] = (in[i + 4] & 0xF0) | (in[i + 5] >> 4);
in[outIdx++] = (in[i + 6] & 0xF0) | (in[i + 7] >> 4);
}
... where I basically process 8 bytes of input in every loop, to illustrate that I can assume input_length to be divisible by 8 (even though it's probably not faster than processing only 2 bytes per loop). The operation is done in-place, overwriting the input array.
Is there a faster way to do this? For example, since I can read in 8 bytes at a time anyway, the operation could be done on 4-byte or 8-byte integers instead of individual bytes, but I cannot think of a way to do that. The compiler doesn't come up with something itself either, as I can see the output code still operates on bytes (-O3 seems to do some loop unrolling, but that's it).
I don't have control over the input, so I cannot store it differently to begin with.
There is a general technique for bit-fiddling to swap bits around. Suppose you have a 64-bit number, containing the following nibbles:
HxGxFxExDxCxBxAx
Here by x I denote a nibble whose value is unimportant (you want to delete it). The result of your bit-operation should be a 32-bit number HGFEDCBA.
First, delete all the x nibbles:
HxGxFxExDxCxBxAx & *_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_ = H_G_F_E_D_C_B_A_
Here I denote 0 by _, and binary 1111 by * for clarity.
Now, replicate your data:
H_G_F_E_D_C_B_A_ << 4 = _G_F_E_D_C_B_A__
H_G_F_E_D_C_B_A_ | _G_F_E_D_C_B_A__ = HGGFFEEDDCCBBAA_
Notice how some of your target nibbles are together. You need to retain these places, and delete duplicate data.
HGGFFEEDDCCBBAA_ & **__**__**__**__ = HG__FE__DC__BA__
From here, you can extract the result bytes directly, or do another iteration or two of the technique.
Next iteration:
HG__FE__DC__BA__ << 8 = __FE__DC__BA____
HG__FE__DC__BA__ | __FE__DC__BA____ = HGFEFEDCDCBABA__
HGFEFEDCDCBABA__ & ****____****____ = HGFE____DCBA____
Last iteration:
HGFE____DCBA____ << 16 = ____DCBA________
HGFE____DCBA____ | ____DCBA________ = HGFEDCBADCBA____
HGFEDCBADCBA____ >> 32 = ________HGFEDCBA
All x64-86 (and most x86) cpus have SSE2.
For each 16-bit lane do
t = (x & 0x00F0) | (x >> 12).
Then use the pack instruction to truncate each 16-bit lane to 8-bits.
For example, 0xABCD1234 would become 0x00CA0031 then the pack would make it 0xCA31.
#include <emmintrin.h>
void squish_32bytesTo16 (unsigned char* src, unsigned char* dst) {
const __m128i mask = _mm_set1_epi16(0x00F0);
__m128i src0 = _mm_loadu_si128((__m128i*)(void*)src);
__m128i src1 = _mm_loadu_si128((__m128i*)(void*)(src + sizeof(__m128i)));
__m128i t0 = _mm_or_si128(_mm_and_si128(src0, mask), _mm_srli_epi16(src0, 12));
__m128i t1 = _mm_or_si128(_mm_and_si128(src1, mask), _mm_srli_epi16(src1, 12));
_mm_storeu_si128((__m128i*)(void*)dst, _mm_packus_epi16(t0, t1));
}
Just to put the resulting code here for future reference, it now looks like this (assuming the system is little endian, and the input length is a multiple of 8 bytes):
void compress(unsigned char* in, size_t input_length)
{
unsigned int* inUInt = reinterpret_cast<unsigned int*>(in);
unsigned long long* inULong = reinterpret_cast<unsigned long long*>(in);
for(size_t i = 0; i < input_length / 8; ++i)
{
unsigned long long value = inULong[i] & 0xF0F0F0F0F0F0F0F0;
value = (value >> 4) | (value << 8);
value &= 0xFF00FF00FF00FF00;
value |= (value << 8);
value &= 0xFFFF0000FFFF0000;
value |= (value << 16);
inUInt[i] = static_cast<unsigned int>(value >> 32);
}
}
Benchmarked very roughly it's around twice as fast as the code in the question (using MSVC19 /O2).
Note that this is basically the solution anatolyg posted before (just put into code), so upvote that answer instead if you found this helpful.

How to read/write arbitrary bits in C/C++

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.

How to convert 8 17-bit integers into 17 8-bit integers efficiently

Okay, I have the following problem: I have a set of 8 (unsigned) numbers that are all 17bit (a.k.a. none of them are any bigger than 131071). Since 17bit numbers are annoying work work with (keeping them in a 32-bit int is a waste of space), I would like to turn these into 17 8-bit numbers, like so:
If I have these 8 17-bit integers:
[25409, 23885, 24721, 23159, 25409, 23885, 24721, 23159]
I would turn them into a base 2 representationL
["00110001101000001", "00101110101001101", "00110000010010001", "00101101001110111", "00110001101000001", "00101110101001101", "00110000010010001", "00101101001110111"]
Then join that into one big string:
"0011000110100000100101110101001101001100000100100010010110100111011100110001101000001001011101010011010011000001001000100101101001110111"
Then split that into 17 strings, each with 8 chars:
["00110001", "10100000", "10010111", "01010011", "01001100", "00010010", "00100101", "10100111", "01110011", "00011010", "00001001", "01110101", "00110100", "11000001", "00100010", "01011010", "01110111"]
And, finally, convert the binary representations back into integers
[49, 160, 151, 83, 76, 18, 37, 167, 115, 26, 9, 117, 52, 193, 34, 90, 119]
This method works, but it's not very efficient, I am looking for something more efficient than this, preferrably coded in C++, since that's the language I am working with. I just can't think of any way to do this more efficient, and 17-bit numbers aren't exactly easy to work with (16-bit numbers would be much nicer to work with).
Thanks in advance, xfbs
Store the lowest 16 bits of each number as-is (i.e. in two bytes). This leaves the most significant bit of each number. Since there are eight such numbers, simply combine the eight bits into one extra byte.
This will require exactly the same amount of memory as your method, but will involve a lot less bit twiddling.
P.S. Regardless of the storage method, you should be using bit-manipulation operators (<<, >>, &, | and so on) to do the job; there should not be any intermediate string-based representations involved.
Have a look at std::bitset<N>. May be you can stuff them into that?
Efficiently? Then don't use string conversions, bitfields, etc. Manage to do shifts yourself to achieve that. (Note that the arrays must be unsigned so that we don't encounter problems when shifting).
uint32 A[8]; //Your input, unsigned int
ubyte B[17]; //Output, unsigned byte
B[0] = (ubyte)A[0];
B[1] = (ubyte)(A[0] >> 8);
B[2] = (ubyte)A[1];
B[3] = (ubyte)(A[1] >> 8);
.
:
And for the last one, we do what ajx said. We take the most significant digit of each number (shifting them 16 bits to the right leaves the 17th digit) and fill the bits of our output by shifting each of the most significant digits from 0 to 7 to the left:
B[16] = (A[0] >> 16) | ((A[1] >> 16) << 1) | ((A[2] >> 16) << 2) | ((A[3] >> 16) << 3) | ... | ((A[7] >> 16) << 7);
Well, "efficient" was this. Other easier methods exist, too.
Though you say they are 17-bit numbers, they must be stored into an array of 32bit integers, where only the less significant 17 bits are used. You can extract from the first directly two bytes (dst[0] = src[0] >> 9 is the first, dst[1] = (src[0] >> 1) & 0xff the second); then you "push" the first bit as the 18th bit of the second, so that
dst[2] = (src[0] & 1) << 7 | src[1] >> 10;
dst[3] = (src[1] >> 2) & 0xff;
if you generalize it, you will see that this "formula" may be applied
dst[2*i] = src[i] >> (9+i) | (src[i-1] & BITS(i)) << (8-i);
dst[2*i + 1] = (src[i] >> (i+1)) & 0xff;
and for the last one: dst[16] = src[7] & 0xff;.
The whole code could look like
dst[0] = src[0] >> 9;
dst[1] = (src[0] >> 1) & 0xff;
for(i = 1; i < 8; i++)
{
dst[2*i] = src[i] >> (9+i) | (src[i-1] & BITS(i)) << (8-i);
dst[2*i + 1] = (src[i] >> (i+1)) & 0xff;
}
dst[16] = src[7] & 0xff;
Likely analysing better the loops, optimizations can be done so that we don't need to treat in a special manner the cases on the boundaries. The BITS macro create a mask of N bits set to 1 (least significant bits). Something like (to be checked for a better way, if any)
#define BITS(I) (~((~0)<<(I)))
ADD
Here I supposed src is e.g. int32_t and dst int8_t or alike.
This is in C, so you can use vector instead.
#define srcLength 8
#define destLength 17
int src[srcLength] = { 25409, 23885, 24721, 23159, 25409, 23885, 24721, 23159 };
unsigned char dest[destLength] = { 0 };
int srcElement = 0;
int bits = 0;
int i = 0;
int j = 0;
do {
while( bits >= srcLength ) {
dest[i++] = srcElement >> (bits - srcLength);
srcElement = srcElement & ((1 << bits) - 1);
bits -= srcLength;
}
if( j < srcLength ) {
srcElement <<= destLength;
bits += destLength;
srcElement |= src[j++];
}
} while (bits > 0);
Disclaimer: if you literally have seventeen integers (and not 100000 groups by 17), you should forget these optimizations as long as your program doesn't run veeery slowly.
I'd probably go about it this way. I don't want to deal with weird types when I'm doing my processing. Maybe I need to store them in some funky formatting due to legacy problems though. The values that are hard-coded should probably be based off of the 17 value, just didn't bother.
struct int_block {
static const uint32 w = 17;
static const uint32 m = 131071;
int_block() : data(151, 0) {} // w * 8 + (sizeof(uint32) - w)
uint32 get(size_t i) const {
uint32 retval = *reinterpret_cast<const uint32 *>( &data[i*w] );
retval &= m;
return retval;
}
void set(size_t i, uint32 val) {
uint32 prev = *reinterpret_cast<const uint32 *>( &data[i*w] );
prev &= ~m;
val |= prev;
*reinterpret_cast<uint32 *>( &data[i*w] ) = val;
}
std::vector<char> data;
};
TEST(int_block_test) {
int_block ib;
for (uint32 i = 0; i < 8; i++)
ib.set(i, i+25);
for (uint32 i = 0; i < 8; i++)
CHECK_EQUAL(i+25, ib.get(i));
}
You'd be able to break this by giving it bad values, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader. :))
Quite honestly, I think you'd be happier off representing them as 32-bit integers and just writing conversion functions. But I suspect you don't have control over that.

Parsing 32 bit integer in C program

I have a 32 bit integer, split into parts like this:
--------------------------------------
| Part1 | Part2 | Part 3 |
--------------------------------------
Part 1 higher 16 bits. (Part 2 + Part 3) = lower 16 bits.
Part 2 is 10 bits and Part 3 is 6 bits
I need help on how do we read and update part 1, part2 and part 3 in C program.
Given an integer x with the above format, you can replace Part2 like this:
x = (x & ~(0x3ff << 6)) | (newPart2 << 6);
and Part3 like so:
x = (x & ~0x3f) | newPart3;
This assumes that both newPart2 and newPart3 are e.g. unsigned int with their new values right-adjusted.
int i
To extract the individual parts
part1 = (i & 0xFFFF0000) >> 16
part2 = (i & 0x0000FFC0) >> 6
part3 = (i & 0x0000003F)
To compose the integer
i = (part1 << 16) | (part2 << 6) | (part3)
Try cast to this structure
struct {
uint32_t part_1:16;
uint32_t part_2:10;
uint32_t part_3:6;
} parts;
Could be the one below depending on endianness
struct {
uint32_t part_1:6;
uint32_t part_2:10;
uint32_t part_3:16;
} parts;
Obviously not portable!
Since you need to read and update, a pointer will do. For example, if you 32bit value is called x, you do the following
parts *ptr = (parts *)&x;
ptr->part_2 = <part2 update>
The theory to be used behind this are and, or and shift operations with masks.
To access some bits of the integer, first create a mask where there are ones in the bits you want to be used. Now apply and and(&) operation between the mask and the integer. According to the behavior of the & the bits where the mask is 0 will be 0 and where the mask is 1 will have the value of that bit in the integer. Now that we have only the bits we want we align them to the right, that is done shifting the bits to the right the correct number of positions as to leave the rightmost bit of the mask in the less significant position of the byte.
To write in a part of a byte, we need fist to nullify what was in that part for that we use the negated mask that is used to read that part. Once that part is negated we apply an or(|) operation with the new value that must be aligned to that position.
To read:
unsigned int read_part_1(unsigned int composed) {
return (composed & 0xffff0000) >> 16;
}
unsigned int read_part_2(unsigned int composed) {
return (composed & 0x0000ffc0) >> 6;
}
unsigned int read_part_3(unsigned int composed) {
return (composed & 0x0000003f);
}
To write(val aligned to the right):
unsigned int write_part_1(unsigned int composed, unsigned int val) {
return (composed & ~0xffff0000) | ((val & 0x0000ffff) << 16);
}
unsigned int write_part_2(unsigned int composed, unsigned int val) {
return (composed & ~0x0000ffc0) | ((val & 0x000003ff) << 10);
}
unsigned int write_part_3(unsigned int composed, unsigned int val) {
return (composed & ~0x0000003f) | (val & 0x0000003f);
}