I'm looking for a bitset implementation with fast bit appending, where several bits can be efficiently appended in one go.
e.g.
char value = 31;
char n_bits = 5;
fast_bitset bits;
bits.append(value, n_bits);
I have so far tried boost::dynamic_bitset and std::vector. Both of which are slow.
Old Post
I'm using boost::dynamic_bitset to pack some data.
Usually I want to pack ~5 bits at a time which would result in a call like:
char value = 31;
char n_bits = 5;
boost::dynamic_bitset<> bits;
for(char n = n_bits-1; n >= 0; --n)
bits.push_back((value >> n) & 1);
However this seems to me quite inefficient, couldn't one add all the bits in one go?
e.g.
char value = 31;
char n_bits = 5;
boost::dynamic_bitset<> bits;
bits.append(value, n_bits);
I would expect it to do something like:
template<typename T>
void append(T value, size_t n_bits)
{
value <<= sizeof(T) - n_bits; // Make target bits most significant, remove all non-target bits.
// TODO: Shift bits into proper place and use OR to add all target bits to bitset in one go
}
Why doesn't dynamic_bitset have such a function? Would it be possible to implement efficiently?