[Tutor] working with bit arrays
Alan Gauld
alan.gauld at btinternet.com
Thu Dec 3 01:53:02 CET 2009
"Robert Berman" <bermanrl at cfl.rr.com> wrote
> I am trying to represent a number as a list of bits: for example the bit
> representation of the integer 8.
Numbers are already represented as arrays of bits, thats how
they are stored.
> I am almost certain there is a relatively easy way to convert an integer
> that can be represented by 32 bits into an array of bits that I can
> iterate over looking for switched on bits or switched off bits.
You can do that using bitmasks. For example to extract the 4th bit
use
bit4 = value & 0x08 # 0x08 = 00001000
For bit 2 use
bit2 = value & 0x02 # 0x02 = 00000010
You can iterate over each bit using
for index in range(number_of_bits):
print "bit", index + 1, "is", int(bool(value & (2**index))) #
int(bool()) prints 1/0
Or am I missing something?
--
Alan Gauld
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.alan-g.me.uk/
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