I have a big lump of binary data in a char[] array which I need to interpret as an array of packed 6-bit values.
I could sit down and write some code to do this but I'm thinking there has to be a good extant class or function somebody has written already.
What I need is something like:
int get_bits(char* data, unsigned bitOffset, unsigned numBits);
so I could get the 7th 6-bit character in the data by calling:
const unsigned BITSIZE = 6;
char ch = static_cast<char>(get_bits(data, 7 * BITSIZE, BITSIZE));
This may not work for sizes greater than 8, depending on endian system. It's basically what Marco posted, though I'm not entirely sure why he'd gather one bit at a time.
int get_bits(char* data, unsigned int bitOffset, unsigned int numBits) {
numBits = pow(2,numBits) - 1; //this will only work up to 32 bits, of course
data += bitOffset/8;
bitOffset %= 8;
return (*((int*)data) >> bitOffset) & numBits; //little endian
//return (flip(data[0]) >> bitOffset) & numBits; //big endian
}
//flips from big to little or vice versa
int flip(int x) {
char temp, *t = (char*)&x;
temp = t[0];
t[0] = t[3];
t[3] = temp;
temp = t[1];
t[1] = t[2];
t[2] = temp;
return x;
}
Boost.DynamicBitset - try it.
I think something in the line of the following might work.
int get_bit(char *data, unsigned bitoffset) // returns the n-th bit
{
int c = (int)(data[bitoffset >> 3]); // X>>3 is X/8
int bitmask = 1 << (bitoffset & 7); // X&7 is X%8
return ((c & bitmask)!=0) ? 1 : 0;
}
int get_bits(char* data, unsigned bitOffset, unsigned numBits)
{
int bits = 0;
for (int currentbit = bitOffset; currentbit < bitOffset + numBits; currentbit++)
{
bits = bits << 1;
bits = bits | get_bit(data, currentbit);
}
return bits;
}
I've not debugged nor tested it, but you can use it as a start point.
Also, take into account bit order. You might want to change
int bitmask = 1 << (bitoffset & 7); // X&7 is X%8
to
int bitmask = 1 << (7 - (bitoffset & 7)); // X&7 is X%8
depending on how the bit array has been generated.