how to bit shift the variable and form the whole value - c

I have the following code in C:
#include <stdint.h>
uint32_t result;
uint8_t bit[4] = {1, 2, 3, 4};
since each element of bit array takes 8 bits, and variable result take 32 bits, I want to form the result using 4 elements in the bit array, bit[0] takes the most significant bit(MSB) 8 bits of result, bit[1] takes the second MSB 8 bits of result, bit[2] takes the third MSB 8 bits of result, bit[3] takes the least significant bit 8 bits of result, how to form it in C?
I know the bit shift operator, but after shift all the elements, how to combine them together to form a value?

The classic approach is to shift the values accordingly and bitwise OR them:
result = bit[3] | (bit[2] << 8) | (bit[1] << 16) | (bit[0] << 24);
When you perform a shift operation on a type that is smaller than an int, it will automatically be "promoted" to an int (look up "integer promotion"). Since int is is at least 32 bits on all real systems, this code is safe in a practical sense.
But, if you need to work with a data type larger than an int, you should cast the bit[x] to the target type before shifting. If, for example you are working on a platform where int is 16 bits (e.g. 8086), the correct code would be:
result = (uint32_t)bit[3] | ((uint32_t)bit[2] << 8) | ((uint32_t)bit[1] << 16) | ((uint32_t)bit[0] << 24);
(this has some needless casting, but illustrates a point and doesn't harm anything)
Similarly, if result was uint64_t and you had 8 elements in bit, you'd need to cast them all to uin64_t, as by default they will only get promoted to int, which is (likely) 32bit.
However, if you want to access specific bytes of a uint32_t you can declare them as a union:
union { uint32_t result; uint8_t bytes[4]; } u;
u.result = 0xabcdef12;
u.bytes[2] = 0x78;
printf("%x", u.result);

Related

How to combine two hex value(High Value & Low Value) at two different array positions?

I received two hex values where at array[1] = lowbyte and at array[2] = highbyte where for my example lowbyte = 0xF4 and highbyte = 0x01 so the value will be in my example 1F4(500). So I want to combine these two values and compare but how do I do that without any library function?
Please help and sorry for my bad English.
I did some research and I found this as my solution and it seems to be working fine:
int temp = (short)(((HIGHBYTE) & 0xFF) << 8 | (LOWBYTE) & 0xFF);
Just a basic example showing how to combine values of two different variables into one:
#include <stdio.h>
int main (void)
{
char highbyte = 0x01;
unsigned char lowbyte = 0xF4; //Edited as per comments from #Fe2O3,
short int val = 0;
val = (highbyte << 8) | lowbyte; // If lowbyte declared as signed, then masking is required `lowbyte & 0xFF`
printf("0x%hx\n", val);
return 0;
}
Tested this on Linux PC.
Based on the answer where you converted to short, it seems you may want to combine the two bytes to produce a 16-bit two’s complement integer. This answer shows how to do that in three ways for which the behavior is fully defined by the C standard, as well as a fourth way that requires knowledge of the C implementation being used. Methods 1 and 3 are also defined in C++.
Given two eight-bit unsigned bytes with the more significant byte in highbyte and the less significant byte in lowbyte, four options for constructing the 16-bit two’s complement value they represent are:
Assemble the bytes in the desired order and copy them into an int16_t: uint16_t t = (uint16_t) highbyte << 8 | lowbyte; int16_t result; memcpy(&result, &t, sizeof result);.
Assemble the bytes in the desired order and use a union to reinterpret them: int16_t result = (union { uint16_t u; int16_t i; }) { (uint16_t) highbyte << 8 | lowbyte } .i;.
Construct the result arithmetically: int16_t result = ((highbyte ^ 128) - 128) * 256 + lowbyte;.
If it is given that the code will be used only with C implementations that define conversion to a signed integer to wrap, then a conversion may be used: int16_t result = (int16_t) ((uint16_t) highbyte << 8 | lowbyte);.
(In the last, the conversion to int16_t is implicit in the initialization, but a cast is used because, without it, some compilers will produce a warning or error, depending on switches.)
Note: int16_t and uint16_t are defined by including <stdint.h>. Alternatively, if it is given that short is 16 bits, then short and unsigned short may be used in place of int16_t and uint16_t.
Here is more information about the first three of these.
1. Assemble the bytes and copy
(uint16_t) highbyte << 8 | lowbyte converts to a type suitable for shifting without sign-bit issues, moves the more significant byte into the upper 8 bits of 16, and puts the less significant byte into the lower 8 bits.
Then uint16_t = …; puts those bits into a uint16_t.
memcpy(&result, &t, sizeof result); copies those bits into an int16_t. C 2018 7.20.1.1 1 guarantees that int16_t uses two’s complement. C 2018 6.2.6.2 2 guarantees that the value bits in int16_t have the same position values as their counterparts in uint16_t, so the copy produces the desired arrangement in result.
2. Assemble the bytes and use a union
(type) { initial value } is a compound literal. (union { uint16_t u; int16_t i; }) { (uint16_t) highbyte << 8 | lowbyte } makes a compound literal that is a union and initializes its u member to have the value described above. Then .i reads the i member of the union, which reinterprets the bits using the type int16_t, which is two’s complement as describe above. Then int16_t result = …; initializes result to this value.
3. Construct the result arithmetically
Here we start with the more significant byte separately, interpreting the eight bits of highbyte as two’s complement. In eight-bit two’s complement, the sign bit represents 0 if it is off and −128 if it is on. (For example, 111111002 as unsigned binary represents 128+64+32+16+8+4 =252, but, in two’s complement, it is −128+64+32+16+8+4 = −4.)
Consider highbyte ^ 128) - 128. If the first bit is off, ^ 128 turns it on, which adds 128 to its unsigned binary meaning. Then - 128 subtracts 128, producing a net effect of zero. If the first bit is on, ^ 128 turns it off, which cancels its unsigned binary meaning. Then - 128 gives the desired value. Thus (highbyte ^ 128) - 128 reinterprets the first bit to have a value of 0 if it is off and −128 if it is on.
Then ((highbyte ^ 128) - 128) * 256 moves this to the more significant byte of 16 bits (in an int type at this point), and + lowbyte puts the less significant byte in the less significant position. And of course int16_t result = …; initializes result to this computed value.

Convert 8 bit signed integer to unsigned and then convert to int32

I have a signed 8-bit integer (int8_t) -- which can be any value from -5 to 5 -- and need to convert it to an unsigned 8-bit integer (uint8_t).
This uint8_t value then gets passed to another piece of hardware (which can only handle 32-bit types) and needs to be converted to a int32_t.
How can I do this?
Example code:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdint.h>
void main() {
int8_t input;
uint8_t package;
int32_t output;
input = -5;
package = (uint8_t)input;
output = (int32_t)package;
printf("output = %d",output);
}
In this example, I start with -5. It temporarily gets cast to 251 so it can be packaged as a uint8_t. This data then gets sent to another piece of hardware where I can't use (int8_t) to cast the 8-bit unsigned integer back to signed before casting to int32_t. Ultimately, I want to be able to obtain the original -5 value.
For more info, the receiving hardware is a SHARC processor which doesn't allow int8_t - see https://ez.analog.com/dsp/sharc-processors/f/q-a/118470/error-using-stdint-h-types
The smallest addressable memory unit on the SHARC processor is 32 bits, which means that the minimum size of any data type is 32 bits. This applies to the native C types like char and short. Because the types "int8_t", "uint16_t" specify that the size of the type must be 8 bits and 16 bits respectively, they cannot be supported for SHARC.
Here is one possible branch-free conversion:
output = package; // range 0 to 255
output -= (output & 0x80) << 1;
The second line will subtract 256 if bit 7 is set, e.g.:
251 has bit 7 set, 251 - 256 = -5
5 has bit 7 clear, 5 - 0 = 5
If you want to get the negative sign back using 32-bit operations, you could do something like this:
output = (int32_t)package;
if (output & 0x80) { /* char sign bit set */
output |= 0xffffff00;
}
printf("output = %d",output);
Since your receiver platform does not have types that are less than 32 bits wide, your simplest option is to solve this problem on the sender:
int8_t input = -5;
int32_t input_extended = input;
uint8_t buffer[4];
memcpy(buffer, &input_extended, 4);
send_data(buffer, 4);
Then on the receiving end you can simply treat the data as a single int32_t:
int32_t received_data;
receive_data(&received_data, 4);
All of this is assuming that your sender and receiver share the same endianness. If not, you will have to flip the endianness in the sender before sending:
int8_t input = -5;
int32_t input_extended = input;
uint32_t tmp = (uint32_t)input_extended;
tmp = ((tmp >> 24) & 0x000000ff)
| ((tmp >> 8) & 0x0000ff00)
| ((tmp << 8) & 0x00ff0000)
| ((tmp << 24) & 0xff000000);
uint8_t buffer[4];
memcpy(buffer, &tmp, 4);
send_data(buffer, 4);
Just subtract 256 from the value, because in 2's complement an n-bit negative value v is stored as 2n - v
input = -5;
package = (uint8_t)input;
output = package > 127 ? (int32_t)package - 256 : package;
EDIT:
If the issue is that your code has if statements for values of -5 to 5, than the simplest solution might be to test for result + 5 and change the if statements to values between 0 and 10.
This is probably what the compiler will do when optimizing (since values of 0-10 can be converted to a map, avoiding if statements and minimizing predictive CPU flushing).
Original:
Type casting will work if first cast to uint8_t and then uint32_t...
output = (int32_t)(uint32_t)(uint8_t)input;
Of course, if the 8th bit is set it will remain set, but the sign won't be extended since the type casting operation is telling the compiler to treat the 8th bit as a regular bit (it is unsigned).
Of course, you can always have fun with bit masking if you want to be even more strict, but that's essentially a waste or CPU cycles.
The code:
#include <stdint.h>
#include <stdio.h>
void main() {
int8_t input;
int32_t output;
input = -5;
output = (int32_t)(uint32_t)(uint8_t)input;
printf("output = %d\n", output);
}
Results in "output = 251".

Converting 32 bit number to four 8bit numbers

I am trying to convert the input from a device (always integer between 1 and 600000) to four 8-bit integers.
For example,
If the input is 32700, I want 188 127 00 00.
I achieved this by using:
32700 % 256
32700 / 256
The above works till 32700. From 32800 onward, I start getting incorrect conversions.
I am totally new to this and would like some help to understand how this can be done properly.
Major edit following clarifications:
Given that someone has already mentioned the shift-and-mask approach (which is undeniably the right one), I'll give another approach, which, to be pedantic, is not portable, machine-dependent, and possibly exhibits undefined behavior. It is nevertheless a good learning exercise, IMO.
For various reasons, your computer represents integers as groups of 8-bit values (called bytes); note that, although extremely common, this is not always the case (see CHAR_BIT). For this reason, values that are represented using more than 8 bits use multiple bytes (hence those using a number of bits with is a multiple of 8). For a 32-bit value, you use 4 bytes and, in memory, those bytes always follow each other.
We call a pointer a value containing the address in memory of another value. In that context, a byte is defined as the smallest (in terms of bit count) value that can be referred to by a pointer. For example, your 32-bit value, covering 4 bytes, will have 4 "addressable" cells (one per byte) and its address is defined as the first of those addresses:
|==================|
| MEMORY | ADDRESS |
|========|=========|
| ... | x-1 | <== Pointer to byte before
|--------|---------|
| BYTE 0 | x | <== Pointer to first byte (also pointer to 32-bit value)
|--------|---------|
| BYTE 1 | x+1 | <== Pointer to second byte
|--------|---------|
| BYTE 2 | x+2 | <== Pointer to third byte
|--------|---------|
| BYTE 3 | x+3 | <== Pointer to fourth byte
|--------|---------|
| ... | x+4 | <== Pointer to byte after
|===================
So what you want to do (split the 32-bit word into 8-bits word) has already been done by your computer, as it is imposed onto it by its processor and/or memory architecture. To reap the benefits of this almost-coincidence, we are going to find where your 32-bit value is stored and read its memory byte-by-byte (instead of 32 bits at a time).
As all serious SO answers seem to do so, let me cite the Standard (ISO/IEC 9899:2018, 6.2.5-20) to define the last thing I need (emphasis mine):
Any number of derived types can be constructed from the object and function types, as follows:
An array type describes a contiguously allocated nonempty set of objects with a particular member object type, called the element type. [...] Array types are characterized by their element type and by the number of elements in the array. [...]
[...]
So, as elements in an array are defined to be contiguous, a 32-bit value in memory, on a machine with 8-bit bytes, really is nothing more, in its machine representation, than an array of 4 bytes!
Given a 32-bit signed value:
int32_t value;
its address is given by &value. Meanwhile, an array of 4 8-bit bytes may be represented by:
uint8_t arr[4];
notice that I use the unsigned variant because those bytes don't really represent a number per se so interpreting them as "signed" would not make sense. Now, a pointer-to-array-of-4-uint8_t is defined as:
uint8_t (*ptr)[4];
and if I assign the address of our 32-bit value to such an array, I will be able to index each byte individually, which means that I will be reading the byte directly, avoiding any pesky shifting-and-masking operations!
uint8_t (*bytes)[4] = (void *) &value;
I need to cast the pointer ("(void *)") because I can't bear that whining compiler &value's type is "pointer-to-int32_t" while I'm assigning it to a "pointer-to-array-of-4-uint8_t" and this type-mismatch is caught by the compiler and pedantically warned against by the Standard; this is a first warning that what we're doing is not ideal!
Finally, we can access each byte individually by reading it directly from memory through indexing: (*bytes)[n] reads the n-th byte of value!
To put it all together, given a send_can(uint8_t) function:
for (size_t i = 0; i < sizeof(*bytes); i++)
send_can((*bytes)[i]);
and, for testing purpose, we define:
void send_can(uint8_t b)
{
printf("%hhu\n", b);
}
which prints, on my machine, when value is 32700:
188
127
0
0
Lastly, this shows yet another reason why this method is platform-dependent: the order in which the bytes of the 32-bit word is stored isn't always what you would expect from a theoretical discussion of binary representation i.e:
byte 0 contains bits 31-24
byte 1 contains bits 23-16
byte 2 contains bits 15-8
byte 3 contains bits 7-0
actually, AFAIK, the C Language permits any of the 24 possibilities for ordering those 4 bytes (this is called endianness). Meanwhile, shifting and masking will always get you the n-th "logical" byte.
It really depends on how your architecture stores an int. For example
8 or 16 bit system short=16, int=16, long=32
32 bit system, short=16, int=32, long=32
64 bit system, short=16, int=32, long=64
This is not a hard and fast rule - you need to check your architecture first. There is also a long long but some compilers do not recognize it and the size varies according to architecture.
Some compilers have uint8_t etc defined so you can actually specify how many bits your number is instead of worrying about ints and longs.
Having said that you wish to convert a number into 4 8 bit ints. You could have something like
unsigned long x = 600000UL; // you need UL to indicate it is unsigned long
unsigned int b1 = (unsigned int)(x & 0xff);
unsigned int b2 = (unsigned int)(x >> 8) & 0xff;
unsigned int b3 = (unsigned int)(x >> 16) & 0xff;
unsigned int b4 = (unsigned int)(x >> 24);
Using shifts is a lot faster than multiplication, division or mod. This depends on the endianess you wish to achieve. You could reverse the assignments using b1 with the formula for b4 etc.
You could do some bit masking.
600000 is 0x927C0
600000 / (256 * 256) gets you the 9, no masking yet.
((600000 / 256) & (255 * 256)) >> 8 gets you the 0x27 == 39. Using a 8bit-shifted mask of 8 set bits (256 * 255) and a right shift by 8 bits, the >> 8, which would also be possible as another / 256.
600000 % 256 gets you the 0xC0 == 192 as you did it. Masking would be 600000 & 255.
I ended up doing this:
unsigned char bytes[4];
unsigned long n;
n = (unsigned long) sensore1 * 100;
bytes[0] = n & 0xFF;
bytes[1] = (n >> 8) & 0xFF;
bytes[2] = (n >> 16) & 0xFF;
bytes[3] = (n >> 24) & 0xFF;
CAN_WRITE(0x7FD,8,01,sizeof(n),bytes[0],bytes[1],bytes[2],bytes[3],07,255);
I have been in a similar kind of situation while packing and unpacking huge custom packets of data to be transmitted/received, I suggest you try below approach:
typedef union
{
uint32_t u4_input;
uint8_t u1_byte_arr[4];
}UN_COMMON_32BIT_TO_4X8BIT_CONVERTER;
UN_COMMON_32BIT_TO_4X8BIT_CONVERTER un_t_mode_reg;
un_t_mode_reg.u4_input = input;/*your 32 bit input*/
// 1st byte = un_t_mode_reg.u1_byte_arr[0];
// 2nd byte = un_t_mode_reg.u1_byte_arr[1];
// 3rd byte = un_t_mode_reg.u1_byte_arr[2];
// 4th byte = un_t_mode_reg.u1_byte_arr[3];
The largest positive value you can store in a 16-bit signed int is 32767. If you force a number bigger than that, you'll get a negative number as a result, hence unexpected values returned by % and /.
Use either unsigned 16-bit int for a range up to 65535 or a 32-bit integer type.

Problem of converting byte order for unsigned 64-bit number in C

I am playing with little endian/big endian conversion and found something that a is a bit confusing but also interesting.
In first example, there is no problem using bit shift to convert byte order for type of uint32_t. It basically cast a uint32_t integer to an array of uint8_t and try to access each byte and bit shift.
Example #1:
uint32_t htonl(uint32_t x)
{
uint8_t *s = (uint8_t*)&x;
return (uint32_t)(s[0] << 24 | s[1] << 16 | s[2] << 8 | s[3]);
}
However, if I try to do something similar on a uint64_t below, the compiler throws a warning about 's[0] width is less than 56 bits` as in Example #2 below.
Example #2:
uint64_t htonl(uint64_t x)
{
uint8_t *s = (uint8_t*)&x;
return (uint64_t)(s[0] << 56 ......);
}
To make it work, I have to fetch each byte into a uint64_t so I can do bit shift without any errors as in Example #3 below.
Example #3:
uint64_t htonll2(uint64_t x)
{
uint64_t byte1 = x & 0xff00000000000000;
uint64_t byte2 = x & 0x00ff000000000000;
uint64_t byte3 = x & 0x0000ff0000000000;
uint64_t byte4 = x & 0x000000ff00000000;
uint64_t byte5 = x & 0x00000000ff000000;
uint64_t byte6 = x & 0x0000000000ff0000;
uint64_t byte7 = x & 0x000000000000ff00;
uint64_t byte8 = x & 0x00000000000000ff;
return (uint64_t)(byte1 >> 56 | byte2 >> 40 | byte3 >> 24 | byte4 >> 8 |
byte5 << 8 | byte6 << 24 | byte7 << 40 | byte8 << 56);
}
I am a little bit confused by Example #1 and Example #2, as far as I understand, both s[i] is of uint8_t size, but somehow if it only shift 32 bits or less there is no problem at all, but there is an issue when shifting like 56 bits. I am running this program on Ubuntu with GCC 8.3.0.
Does the compiler implicitly convert s[i] into 32-bit numbers in this case? sizeof(s[0]) is 1 when I added debug messages to that.
Values with a type smaller than int are promoted to int when used in an expression. Assuming an int is 32 bit on your platform this works in most cases when converting a 32 bit value. The time it won't work is if you shift a 1 bit into the sign bit.
In the 64 bit case this means you're attempting to shift a value more than its bit length which is undefined behavior.
You need to cast each byte to a uint64_t in both cases to allows the shifts to work properly.
The s[0] expression has an 8-bit wide integral type, which is promoted to a 32-bit unsigned integer when operated on by the shift operator – so s[0] << 24 in the first example works OK, as the shift by 24 does not exceed the uint length.
OTOH the shift by 56 bits moves data outside the result's length as the offset exceeds the length of integer, so it certainly causes a loss of information, hence the warning.

C - three bytes into one signed int

I have a sensor which gives its output in three bytes. I read it like this:
unsigned char byte0,byte1,byte2;
byte0=readRegister(0x25);
byte1=readRegister(0x26);
byte2=readRegister(0x27);
Now I want these three bytes merged into one number:
int value;
value=byte0 + (byte1 << 8) + (byte2 << 16);
it gives me values from 0 to 16,777,215 but I'm expecting values from -8,388,608 to 8,388,607. I though that int was already signed by its implementation. Even if I try define it like signed int value; it still gives me only positive numbers. So I guess my question is how to convert int to its two's complement?
Thanks!
What you need to perform is called sign extension. You have 24 significant bits but want 32 significant bits (note that you assume int to be 32-bit wide, which is not always true; you'd better use type int32_t defined in stdint.h). Missing 8 top bits should be either all zeroes for positive values or all ones for negative. It is defined by the most significant bit of the 24 bit value.
int32_t value;
uint8_t extension = byte2 & 0x80 ? 0xff:00; /* checks bit 7 */
value = (int32_t)byte0 | ((int32_t)byte1 << 8) | ((int32_t)byte2 << 16) | ((int32_t)extension << 24);
EDIT: Note that you cannot shift an 8 bit value by 8 or more bits, it is undefined behavior. You'll have to cast it to a wider type first.
#include <stdint.h>
uint8_t byte0,byte1,byte2;
int32_t answer;
// assuming reg 0x25 is the signed MSB of the number
// but you need to read unsigned for some reason
byte0=readRegister(0x25);
byte1=readRegister(0x26);
byte2=readRegister(0x27);
// so the trick is you need to get the byte to sign extend to 32 bits
// so force it signed then cast it up
answer = (int32_t)((int8_t)byte0); // this should sign extend the number
answer <<= 8;
answer |= (int32_t)byte1; // this should just make 8 bit field, not extended
answer <<= 8;
answer |= (int32_t)byte2;
This should also work
answer = (((int32_t)((int8_t)byte0))<<16) + (((int32_t)byte1)<< 8) + byte2;
I may be overly aggressive with parentheses but I never trust myself with shift operators :)

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