Is there a printf converter to print in binary for

Question

I can print with printf as a hex or octal number. Is there a format tag to print as binary, or arbitrary base?

I am running gcc.

printf("%d %x %o\n", 10, 10, 10); //prints "10 A 12\n"
print("%b\n", 10); // prints "%b\n"

Answer 1

Here is a small variation of paniq's solution that uses templates to allow printing of 32 and 64 bit integers:

template<class T>
inline std::string format_binary(T x)
{
    char b[sizeof(T)*8+1] = {0};

    for (size_t z = 0; z < sizeof(T)*8; z++)
        b[sizeof(T)*8-1-z] = ((x>>z) & 0x1) ? '1' : '0';

    return std::string(b);
}

And can be used like:

unsigned int value32 = 0x1e127ad;
printf( "  0x%x: %s\n", value32, format_binary(value32).c_str() );

unsigned long long value64 = 0x2e0b04ce0;
printf( "0x%llx: %s\n", value64, format_binary(value64).c_str() );

Here is the result:

  0x1e127ad: 00000001111000010010011110101101
0x2e0b04ce0: 0000000000000000000000000000001011100000101100000100110011100000

Answer 2

Here's a version of the function that does not suffer from reentrancy issues or limits on the size/type of the argument:

#define FMT_BUF_SIZE (CHAR_BIT*sizeof(uintmax_t)+1)
char *binary_fmt(uintmax_t x, char buf[static FMT_BUF_SIZE])
{
    char *s = buf + FMT_BUF_SIZE;
    *--s = 0;
    if (!x) *--s = '0';
    for(; x; x/=2) *--s = '0' + x%2;
    return s;
}

Note that this code would work just as well for any base between 2 and 10 if you just replace the 2's by the desired base. Usage is:

char tmp[FMT_BUF_SIZE];
printf("%s\n", binary_fmt(x, tmp));

Where x is any integral expression.

Answer 3

My solution:

long unsigned int i;
for(i = 0u; i < sizeof(integer) * CHAR_BIT; i++) {
    if(integer & LONG_MIN)
        printf("1");
    else
        printf("0");
    integer <<= 1;
}
printf("\n");

Answer 4

Maybe a bit OT, but if you need this only for debuging to understand or retrace some binary operations you are doing, you might take a look on wcalc (a simple console calculator). With the -b options you get binary output.

e.g.

$ wcalc -b "(256 | 3) & 0xff"
 = 0b11

Answer 5

There is no formatting function in the C standard library to output binary like that. All the format operations the printf family supports are towards human readable text.

Answer 6

void print_ulong_bin(const unsigned long * const var, int bits) {
        int i;

        #if defined(__LP64__) || defined(_LP64)
                if( (bits > 64) || (bits <= 0) )
        #else
                if( (bits > 32) || (bits <= 0) )
        #endif
                return;

        for(i = 0; i < bits; i++) { 
                printf("%lu", (*var >> (bits - 1 - i)) & 0x01);
        }
}

should work - untested.