Get bits from number string - c

Question

If I have a number string (char array), one digit is one char, resulting in that the space for a four digit number is 5 bytes, including the null termination.
unsigned char num[] ="1024";
printf("%d", sizeof(num)); // 5
However, 1024 can be written as
unsigned char binaryNum[2];
binaryNum[0] = 0b00000100;
binaryNum[1] = 0b00000000;
How can the conversion from string to binary be made effectively?
In my program i would work with ≈30 digit numbers, so the space gain would be big.
My goal is to create datapackets to be sent over UDP/TCP.
I would prefer not to use libraries for this task, since the available space the code can take up is small.
EDIT:
Thanks for quick response.
char num = 0b0000 0100 // "4"
--------------------------
char num = 0b0001 1000 // "24"
-----------------------------
char num[2];
num[0] = 0b00000100;
num[1] = 0b00000000;
// num now contains 1024
I would need ≈ 10 bytes to contain my number in binary form. So, if I as suggested parse the digits one by one, starting from the back, how would that build up to the final big binary number?

Answer 1

In general, converting a number in string representation to decimal is easy because each character can be parsed separately. E.g. to convert "1024" to 1024 you can just look at the '4', convert it to 4, multiply by 10, then convert the 2 and add it, multiply by 10, and so on until you have parsed the whole string.
For binary it is not so easy, e.g. you can convert 4 to 100 and 2 to 010 but 42 is not 100 010 or 110 or something like that. So, your best bet is to convert the whole thing to a number and then convert that number to binary using mathematical operations (bit shifts and such). This will work fine for numbers that fit in one of the C++ number types, but if you want to handle arbitrarily large numbers you will need a BigInteger class which seems to be a problem for you since the code has to be small.
From your question I gather that you want to compress the string representation in order to transmit the number over a network, so I am offering a solution that does not strictly convert to binary but will still use fewer bytes than the string representation and is easy to use. It is based on the fact that you can store a number 0..9 in 4 bits, and so you can fit two of those numbers in a byte. Hence you can store an n-digit number in n/2 bytes. The algorithm could be as follows:
Take the last character, '4'
Subtract '0' to get 4 (i.e. an int with value 4).
Strip the last character.
Repeat to get 0
Concatenate into a single byte: digits[0] = (4 << 4) + 0.
Do the same for the next two numbers: digits[1] = (2 << 4) + 1.
Your representation in memory will now look like
4 0 2 1
0100 0000 0010 0001
digits[0] digits[1]
i.e.
digits = { 64, 33 }
This is not quite the binary representation of 1024, but it is shorter and it allows you to easily recover the original number by reversing the algorithm.
You even have 5 values left that you don't use for storing digits (i.e. everything larger than 1010) which you can use for other things like storing the sign, decimal point, byte order or end-of-number delimiter).
I trust that you will be able to implement this, should you choose to use it.

Answer 2

If I understand your question correctly, you would want to do this:
Convert your string representation into an integer.
Convert the integer into binary representation.
For step 1:
You could loop through the string
Subtract '0' from the char
Multiply by 10^n (depending on the position) and add to a sum.
For step 2 (for int x), in general:
x%2 gives you the least-significant-bit (LSB).
x /= 2 "removes" the LSB.
For example, take x = 6.
x%2 = 0 (LSB), x /= 2 -> x becomes 3
x%2 = 1, x /= 2 -> x becomes 1
x%2 = 1 (MSB), x /= 2 -> x becomes 0.
So we we see that (6)decimal == (110)bin.
On to the implementation (for N=2, where N is maximum number of bytes):
int x = 1024;
int n=-1, p=0, p_=0, i=0, ex=1; //you can use smaller types of int for this if you are strict on memory usage
unsigned char num[N] = {0};
for (p=0; p<(N*8); p++,p_++) {
if (p%8 == 0) { n++; p_=0; } //for every 8bits, 1) store the new result in the next element in the array. 2) reset the placing (start at 2^0 again).
for (i=0; i<p_; i++) ex *= 2; //ex = pow(2,p_); without using math.h library
num[n] += ex * (x%2); //add (2^p_ x LSB) to num[n]
x /= 2; // "remove" the last bit to check for the next.
ex = 1; // reset the exponent
}
We can check the result for x = 1024:
for (i=0; i<N; i++)
printf("num[%d] = %d\n", i, num[i]); //num[0] = 0 (0b00000000), num[1] = 4 (0b00000100)

Answer 3

To convert a up-to 30 digit decimal number, represented as a string, into a serious of bytes, effectively a base-256 representation, takes up to 13 bytes. (ceiling of 30/log10(256))
Simple algorithm
dest = 0
for each digit of the string (starting with most significant)
dest *= 10
dest += digit
As C code
#define STR_DEC_TO_BIN_N 13
unsigned char *str_dec_to_bin(unsigned char dest[STR_DEC_TO_BIN_N], const char *src) {
// dest[] = 0
memset(dest, 0, STR_DEC_TO_BIN_N);
// for each digit ...
while (isdigit((unsigned char) *src)) {
// dest[] = 10*dest[] + *src
// with dest[0] as the most significant digit
int sum = *src - '0';
for (int i = STR_DEC_TO_BIN_N - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
sum += dest[i]*10;
dest[i] = sum % 256;
sum /= 256;
}
// If sum is non-zero, it means dest[] overflowed
if (sum) {
return NULL;
}
}
// If stopped on something other than the null character ....
if (*src) {
return NULL;
}
return dest;
}