Invert specific bits using bitwise NOT (no XOR) - c

How can I use Bitwise Not to invert specific bits for x number? I know we can do this use XOR and mask but question requires use NOT.
I need to invert a group of bits starting at a given position. The variable inside the function includes original value, position wants to start and width = number of bits I want to invert.
I use the shift bit to start from a given position but how can I ensure only x number of bits are inverted using NOT Bitwise function?

Definition of xor: a ^ b <--> (a & ~b) | (~a & b)
unsigned x = 0x0F;
unsigned mask = 0x44; // Selected bits to invert
unsigned selected_x_bits_inverted = (x & ~mask) | (~x & mask);
printf("%02X\n", selected_x_bits_inverted);
// 4B

An approach would be:
First, extract them into y:
y = x & mask
Then, invert y and get only the bits you need:
y = ~y & mask
Clear the bits extracted from x:
x = x & (~mask)
OR those 2 numbers to get the result:
x = x | y
Note that every bit that has to be inverted is 1 in mask. Even if I used other bitwise operators, the actual bit flipping is done by a bitwise not. Also, I don't think it is possible to achieve this result without using some other binary operators.

This function will invert 'width' number of bits of number 'num' from position 'pos'
int invert(int num, int pos, int width)
{
int mask = (~((~0) << width)) << pos;
num = (~(num & mask)) & mask);
}

Related

How to set masked bits to a specified number?

I haven't been able to find an answer to this on Google, nor do I have any better search ideas. If I have a 2 byte number, a mask, and a third number, how do I replace the masked bits with the third number. For example if I have 0xABCD, the mask 0x0F00, and third number 4 - I would like to replace B with 4 to get A4CD. In other words, I want to be able to replace arbitrary bits selected by a mask with the bits of another arbitrary number (we are assuming that the number replacing the bits fits - i.e. if I mask 5 bits, the number to replace those 5 bits requires 5 bits or less to represent.)
The goal is to replace the bits of number selected by mask with those of value, shifted appropriately, assuming value does not exceed the target range.
Masking off the target bits is easy: number &= ~mask; achieves that simply.
The tricky part is to shift value to the left by the number of zero bits in mask below the set ones. You can write a loop for this.
Here is a simple implementation:
unsigned set_bits(unsigned number, unsigned mask, unsigned value) {
// assuming mask != 0
number &= ~mask;
while (!(mask & 1)) {
value <<= 1;
mask >>= 1;
}
return number | value;
}
You can compute the shift value as a multiplier this way: subtracting one from the mask sets all its 0 low bits to 1, or-ing this value with mask sets all low bits to 1 and xor-ing with mask yields a mask with just the low bits set. Adding 1 to this mask gives the power of 2 by which to multiply value to shift it in place. This works also if there are no 0 bits in the low order bits of mask.
As commented by aschepler, (A ^ (A | B)) == (~A & B) so the expression ((mask ^ (mask | (mask - 1))) + 1) can be simplified as (((mask - 1) & ~mask) + 1).
An elegant simplification was provided by Falk Hüffner: (((mask - 1) & ~mask) + 1) is just mask & -mask.
Here is a branchless version using this trick:
unsigned set_bits(unsigned number, unsigned mask, unsigned value) {
return (number & ~mask) | (value * (mask & -mask));
}
Making this an inline function may help the compiler generate optimal code for constant mask values.

C bit-wise operations with hex numbers

Is there a way to access certain parts of a hexadecimal number in C?
I want to write a function that takes in a hexadecimal number and negates it, but leaves the least significant byte unchanged. Example: 0x87654321 should become 0x789ABC21.
I've tried to somehow save the LSB and then apply it to the negated x, but my problem is that my mask gets applied to all bytes. I could hard code it for a specific value, but obviously that's not what I want.
void b(int x) {
int temp = x & 0xFF; // temp is all 0 with the LSB being the same as x's
x = ~x; // this negates x
// one of a couple of attempts I tried thus far:
// x = (x & 0x00) | temp;
// idea: change x's LSB to 00 and OR it with temp,
// changing x's LSB to temp's LSB
}
I'd appreciate if you don't post code for the solution, but rather just answer whether there is a way to apply bit operations to specific sections of a hexadecimal number, or how I could possibly solve this.
In general you can operate on specific bits of a value by using a mask.
A mask is bit-pattern with 1s where you want to operate and 0s where you don't.
It seems like you need 3 operations: extract lowest byte, negate, restore lowest byte. You can figure out negation, so I'll just talk about extracting a bit-field and restoring an extracted bit-field.
To extract specified bits, use a mask with 1s for the desired bits and use the bitwise and operator &. The and operator sets 0s for all 0s of the mask, and where the mask is 1, it copies the bits from the other argument. If you need to examine this value elsewhere in your program, it may also be convenient to right-shift >> the value down to the lowest position (so it's easier to lookup in tables).
To restore saved bits, shift back up if you shifted it down earlier. Then clear those bits from the value, and use inclusive-or | as a bitwise sum of all one bits. To clear the bits from the value, use the inverse of the mask from the first operation. Ie. y = x & 0xf saves a nibble, x & ~0xf clears that nibble, (x & ~0xf) | y recombines to the same original x.
Edit:
If the piece you're extracting is not in the lowest position, say the second byte (LSB) from a 32 bit unsigned integer, then it may be useful to shift the extracted value to the zero position to work with it.
x = 0x12345678;
y = x & 0xFF00; // == 0x5600
y >>= 8; // == 0x56
But if you do this then you have to shift it back to the correct position (of course) before updating the larger value with a new value for the bitfield.
x = (x & ~0xFF00) | (y << 8);
If I correctly understood the question, seems like it would be something like this (untested).
void b(int x) {
return (~x & ~0xFF) | (x & 0xFF);
}
I've found a way to manipulate a chosen byte. (!!! This would be homework 2.60 of CS:APP !!!)
If 0x12345678 is a given hexadecimal value of type, say int, then doing this will allow me to change the ith byte:
int x = 0x12345678;
unsigned char* xptr = (unsigned char*) &x;
xptr[i] = 0; // say i=2, then this would yield: 0x120045678
Now, if I want to add a value in the position of byte i, say 0xAB, I'd do what luser droog already mentioned:
int temp = 0xAB;
temp = temp << i*8; // say i=2, then this would yield: 0x00AB0000
x = x | temp; // this yields the desired result 0x12AB3456

Convert two's complement to sign-magnitude

I need to convert from two's complement to sign-magnitude in C using only the operators
! ~ & ^ | + << >>
My approach is to find sign:
int sign = !(!(a>>31));
basically, if sign == 1 . I want to flip the number and add 1 else just want to display the number.
The thing is I can't use any loops, if statements etc.
This is what I'm working on:
int s_M = ((((a+1)>>31)^sign)+1)&sign;
any suggestions?
From http://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html#IntegerAbs
int const mask = v >> 31;
unsigned int r = (v + mask) ^ mask;
Gives the absolute value (magnitude). If you wish to add the sign bit back simply mask and or the 32nd bit:
unsigned int s_M = r | (v & 0x80000000);
Or if you're looking for a one liner:
unsigned int s_M = ((v + (v >> 31)) ^ (v >> 31)) | (v & 0x80000000);
When you're converting from 2 complement, you should subtract 1, not add.
I'm not entirely sure what the output should be, but to obtain the magnitude you can do something like this:
int m = (a^(a>>31)) + sign;
Basically, shifting a negative number 31 bits to the right will make it all 1's, or 0xffffffff, which you can then use to xor the input number and make it positive. As you correctly noted sign needs to be added then for the correct result in that case.
If the input number was positive to begin with, the shift results in a zero and so the xor does nothing. Adding sign in that case also doesn't do anything, so it results in the input number.
To get the last bit you could use mask operation
int last_bit = 32 bit integer & 0x80000000
o/p may be 0 or 0x80000000
if it is 0 just display the given number else you have to perform the following operations to represent in signed magnitude
1) Subtract 1 from the number
2) perform 1s complement on the resultant ( that is negation ~)
3) Set the last bit of the resultant number
I mean ( ~ (num -`1) ) | 0x7fffffff
since your restricted not to use - operator. Perform the 2's complement on -1 and add it to the num.
To put it simple in one line
num & 0x80000000 ? printf("%d",(~(num+((~1)+1))) | 0x7fffffff) : printf("%d",num) ;

How can I access a specific group of bits from a variable?

I have a variable with "x" number of bits. How can I extract a specific group of bits and then work on them in C?
You would do this with a series of 2 bitwise logical operations.
[[Terminology MSB (msb) is the most-significant-bit; LSB (lsb) is the least-significant-bit. Assume bits are numbered from lsb==0 to some msb (e.g. 31 on a 32-bit machine). The value of the bit position i represents the coefficient of the 2^i component of the integer.]]
For example if you have int x, and you want to extract some range of bits x[msb..lsb] inclusive, for example a 4-bit field x[7..4] out of the x[31..0] bits, then:
By shifting x right by lsb bits, e.g. x >> lsb, you put the lsb bit of x in the 0th (least significant) bit of the expression, which is where it needs to be.
Now you have to mask off any remaining bits above those designated by msb. The number of such bits is msb-lsb + 1. We can form a bit mask string of '1' bits that long with the expression ~(~0 << (msb-lsb+1)). For example ~(~0 << (7-4+1)) == ~0b11111111111111111111111111110000 == 0b1111.
Putting it all together, you can extract the bit vector you want with into a new integer with this expression:
(x >> lsb) & ~(~0 << (msb-lsb+1))
For example,
int x = 0x89ABCDEF;
int msb = 7;
int lsb = 4;
int result = (x >> lsb) & ~(~0 << (msb-lsb+1));
// == 0x89ABCDE & 0xF
// == 0xE (which is x[7..4])
Make sense?
Happy hacking!
If you're dealing with a primitive then just use bitwise operations:
int bits = 0x0030;
bool third_bit = bits & 0x0004; // bits & 00000100
bool fifth_bit = bits & 0x0010; // bits & 00010000
If x can be larger than a trivial primitive but is known at compile-time then you can use std::bitset<> for the task:
#include<bitset>
#include<string>
// ...
std::bitset<512> b(std::string("001"));
b.set(2, true);
std::cout << b[1] << ' ' << b[2] << '\n';
std::bitset<32> bul(0x0010ul);
If x is not known at compile-time then you can use std::vector<unsigned char> and then use bit-manipulation at runtime. It's more work, the intent reads less obvious than with std::bitset and it's slower, but that's arguably your best option for x varying at runtime.
#include<vector>
// ...
std::vector<unsigned char> v(256);
v[2] = 1;
bool eighteenth_bit = v[2] & 0x02; // second bit of third byte
work on bits with &, |. <<, >> operators.
For example, if you have a value of 7 (integer) and you want to zero out the 2nd bit:
7 is 111
(zero-ing 2nd bit AND it with 101 (5 in decimal))
111 & 101 = 101 (5)
here's the code:
#include <stdio.h>
main ()
{
int x=7;
x= x&5;
printf("x: %d",x);
}
You can do with other operators like the OR, shift left, shift right,etc.
You can use bitfields in a union:
typedef union {
unsigned char value;
struct { unsigned b0:1,b1:1,b2:1,b3:1,b4:1,b5:1,b6:1,b7:1; } b;
struct { unsigned b0:2,b1:2,b2:2,b3:2; } b2;
struct { unsigned b0:4,b1:4; } b4;
} CharBits;
CharBits b={0},a={0};
printf("\n%d",b.value);
b.b.b0=1; printf("\n%d",b.value);
b.b.b1=1; printf("\n%d",b.value);
printf("\n%d",a.value);
a.b4.b1=15; printf("\n%d",a.value); /* <- set the highest 4-bit-group with one statement */

How to represent negation using bitwise operators, C

Suppose you have 2 numbers:
int x = 1;
int y = 2;
Using bitwise operators, how can i represent x-y?
When comparing the bits of two numbers A and B there are three posibilities. The following assumes unsigned numbers.
A == B : All of the bits are the same
A > B: The most significant bit that differs between the two numbers is set in A and not in B
A < B: The most significant bit that differs between the two numbers is set in B and not in A
Code might look like the following
int getDifType(uint32_t A, uint32_t B)
{
uint32_t bitMask = 0x8000000;
// From MSB to LSB
for (bitMask = 0x80000000; 0 != bitMask; bitMask >>= 1)
{
if (A & bitMask != B & bitMask)
return (A & bitMask) - (B & bitMask);
}
// No difference found
return 0;
}
You need to read about two's complement arithmetic. Addition, subtraction, negation, sign testing, and everything else are all done by the hardware using bitwise operations, so you can definitely do it in your C program. The wikipedia link above should teach you everything you need to know to solve your problem.
Your first step will be to implement addition using only bitwise operators. After that, everything should be easy. Start small- what do you have to do to implement 00 + 00, 01 + 01, etc? Go from there.
You need to start checking from the most significant end to find if a number is greater or not. This logic will work only for non-negative integers.
int x,y;
//get x & y
unsigned int mask=1; // make the mask 000..0001
mask=mask<<(8*sizeoF(int)-1); // make the mask 1000..000
while(mask!=0)
{
if(x & mask > y & mask)
{printf("x greater");break;}
else if(y & mask > x & mask)
{printf("y greater");break;}
mask=mask>>1; // shift 1 in mask to the right
}
Compare the bits from left to right, looking for the leftmost bits that differ. Assuming a machine that is two's complement, the topmost bit determines the sign and will have a flipped comparison sense versus the other bits. This should work on any two's complement machine:
int compare(int x, int y) {
unsigned int mask = ~0U - (~0U >> 1); // select left-most bit
if (x & mask && ~y & mask)
return -1; // x < 0 and y >= 0, therefore y > x
else if (~x & mask && y & mask)
return 1; // x >= 0 and y < 0, therefore x > y
for (; mask; mask >>= 1) {
if (x & mask && ~y & mask)
return 1;
else if (~x & mask && y & mask)
return -1;
}
return 0;
}
[Note that this technically isn't portable. C makes no guarantees that signed arithmetic will be two's complement. But you'll be hard pressed to find a C implementation on a modern machine that behaves differently.]
To see why this works, consider first comparing two unsigned numbers, 13d = 1101b and 11d = 1011b. (I'm assuming a 4-bit wordsize for brevity.) The leftmost differing bit is the second from the left, which the former has set, while the other does not. The former number is therefore the larger. It should be fairly clear that this principle holds for all unsigned numbers.
Now, consider two's complement numbers. You negate a number by complementing the bits and adding one. Thus, -1d = 1111b, -2d = 1110b, -3d = 1101b, -4d = 1100b, etc. You can see that two negative numbers can be compared as though they were unsigned. Likewise, two non-negative numbers can also be compared as though unsigned. Only when the signs differ do we have to consider them -- but if they differ, the comparison is trivial!

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