Bytes to Binary in C - c

Question

I'm trying to simply convert a byte received from fget into binary.
I know the value of the first byte was 49 based on printing the value. I now need to convert this into its binary value.
unsigned char byte = 49;// Read from file
unsigned char mask = 1; // Bit mask
unsigned char bits[8];
// Extract the bits
for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++) {
// Mask each bit in the byte and store it
bits[i] = byte & (mask << i);
}
// For debug purposes, lets print the received data
for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++) {
printf("Bit: %d\n",bits[i]);
}
This will print:
Bit: 1
Bit: 0
Bit: 0
Bit: 0
Bit: 16
Bit: 32
Bit: 0
Bit: 0
Press any key to continue . . .
Clearly, this is not a binary value. Any help?

Answer 1

The problem you're having is that your assignment isn't resulting in a true or false value.
bits[i] = byte & (mask << i);
This gets the value of the bit. You need to see if the bit is on or off, like this:
bits[i] = (byte & (mask << i)) != 0;

Answer 2

Change
bits[i] = byte & (mask << i);
to
bits[i] = (byte >> i) & mask;
or
bits[i] = (byte >> i) & 1;
or
bits[i] = byte & 1;
byte >>= 1;

Answer 3

One way, among many:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <limits.h>
int main(void) {
int i;
char bits[CHAR_BIT + 1];
unsigned char value = 47;
for (i = CHAR_BIT - 1; i >= 0; i -= 1) {
bits[i] = '0' + (value & 0x01);
value >>= 1;
}
bits[CHAR_BIT] = 0;
puts(bits);
return 0;
}

Answer 4

You may notice that your output has a couple 1's and 0's, but also powers of 2, such as 32. This is because after you isolate the bit you want using the mask, you still have to bit-shift it into the least-significant digit so that it shows up as a 1. Or you could use what other posts suggested, and instead of bit-shifting the result (something like 00001000 for example), you could simply use (result != 0) to fetch either a 1 or 0, since in C, false is 0, and comparisons such as != will return 1 as true (I think).

Answer 5

#include<Stdio.h>
#include <limits.h>
void main(void) {
unsigned char byte = 49;// Read from file
unsigned char mask = 1; // Bit mask
unsigned char bits[8];
int i, j = CHAR_BIT-1;
// Extract the bits
for ( i = 0; i < 8; i++,j--,mask = 1) {
// Mask each bit in the byte and store it
bits[i] =( byte & (mask<<=j)) != NULL;
}
// For debug purposes, lets print the received data
for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++) {
printf("%d", bits[i]);
}
puts("");
}

Answer 6

This addition in place of that will work:
bits[i]= byte & (mask << i);
bits[i] >>=i;