C++ Bytes To Bits Conversion And Then Print - c++

Question

Code Taken From: Bytes to Binary in C Credit: BSchlinker
The following code I modified to take more than 1 Byte at a time. I modified it, and got it half working and then got really confused on my loops. :( Ive spent the last day and a half trying to figure it out... but my C++ skills are not really that good (still learning!)
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
char show_binary(unsigned char u, unsigned char *result,int len);
int main()
{
unsigned char p40[3] = {0x40, 0x00, 0x0a};
unsigned char bits[8*(sizeof(p40))];
int c;
c=sizeof(p40);
show_binary(*p40, bits, 3);
cout << "\n\n";
cout << "BIN = ";
do{
for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++)
printf("%d",bits[i+(8*c)]);
c++;
}while(c < 3);
cout << "\n";
int a;
cin >> a;
return 0;
}
char show_binary(unsigned char u, unsigned char *result, int len)
{
unsigned char mask = 1;
unsigned char bits[8*sizeof(result)];
int a,b,c;
a=0;
b=0;
c=len;
do{
for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++)
bits[i+(8*a)] = (u[&a] & (mask << i)) != 0;
a++;
}while(a < len);
//Need to reverse it?
do{
for (int i = 8; i != -1; i--)
result[i+(8*c)] = bits[i+(8*c)];
b++;
c--;
}while(b < len);
return *result;
}
After I spit out:
cout << "BIN = ";
do{
for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++)
printf("%d",bits[i+(8*c)]);
c++;
}while(c < 3);
Id like to take bit[11] ~ bit[the end] and compute a BYTE every 8 bits. If that makes sense. But first the function should work. Any pro tips on how this should be done? And of course, rip my code apart. I like to learn.

Answer 1

Man, there is a lot going on in this code, so it's hard to know where to start. Suffice to say, you're trying a bit too hard. It sounds like you are trying to 1) pass in a byte array; 2) turn those bytes into a string representation of the binary; and 3) turn that string representation back into a value?
It just so happens I recently did something similar to this in C, which should still work using a C++ compiler.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
/* A macro to get a substring */
#define substr(dest, src, dest_size, startPos, strLen) snprintf(dest, dest_size, "%.*s", strLen, src+startPos)
/* Pass in char* array of bytes, get binary representation as string in bitStr */
void str2bs(const char *bytes, size_t len, char *bitStr) {
size_t i;
char buffer[9] = "";
for(i = 0; i < len; i++) {
sprintf(buffer,
"%c%c%c%c%c%c%c%c",
(bytes[i] & 0x80) ? '1':'0',
(bytes[i] & 0x40) ? '1':'0',
(bytes[i] & 0x20) ? '1':'0',
(bytes[i] & 0x10) ? '1':'0',
(bytes[i] & 0x08) ? '1':'0',
(bytes[i] & 0x04) ? '1':'0',
(bytes[i] & 0x02) ? '1':'0',
(bytes[i] & 0x01) ? '1':'0');
strncat(bitStr, buffer, 8);
buffer[0] = '\0';
}
}
To get the string of binary back into a value it can by done with bit shifting:
unsigned char bs2uc(char *bitStr) {
unsigned char val = 0;
int toShift = 0;
int i;
for(i = strlen(bitStr)-1; i >= 0; i--) {
if(bitStr[i] == '1') {
val = (1 << toShift) | val;
}
toShift++;
}
return val;
}
Once you had a binary string you could then take substrings of any arbitrary 8 bits (or less, I guess) and turn them back into bytes.
char *bitStr; /* Let's pretend this is populated with a valid string */
char byte[9] = "";
substr(byte, bitStr, 9, 4, 8);
/* This would create a substring of length 8 starting from index 4 of bitStr */
unsigned char b = bs2uc(byte);
I've actually created a whole suite of value -> binary string -> value functions if you'd like to take a look at them. GitHub - binstr