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cbinarybinary-operators

C reverse binary


Possible Duplicate:
C reverse bits in unsigned integer

How can I reverse a binary number only using binary operators?

E.g:

11100000 -> 00000111
00110100 -> 00101100
00111111 -> 11111100

Solution

  • For this sort of thing I recommend that you take a look at the awesome page Bit Twiddling Hacks.

    Here is just one example solution taken from that page:

    Reverse the bits in a byte with 3 operations (64-bit multiply and modulus division)

    unsigned char b; // reverse this (8-bit) byte 
    b = (b * 0x0202020202ULL & 0x010884422010ULL) % 1023;
    

    And as pointed out in the comments, here's another option:

    Reverse an N-bit quantity in parallel in 5 * lg(N) operations

    unsigned int v; // 32-bit word to reverse bit order
    
    // swap odd and even bits
    v = ((v >> 1) & 0x55555555) | ((v & 0x55555555) << 1);
    // swap consecutive pairs
    v = ((v >> 2) & 0x33333333) | ((v & 0x33333333) << 2);
    // swap nibbles ... 
    v = ((v >> 4) & 0x0F0F0F0F) | ((v & 0x0F0F0F0F) << 4);
    // swap bytes
    v = ((v >> 8) & 0x00FF00FF) | ((v & 0x00FF00FF) << 8);
    // swap 2-byte long pairs
    v = ( v >> 16             ) | ( v               << 16);