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

I just want to post my solution. It's used to get zeroes and ones of one byte, but calling this function few times can be used for larger data blocks. I use it for 128 bit or larger structs. You can also modify it to use size_t as input parameter and pointer to data you want to print, so it can be size independent. But it works for me quit well as it is.

void print_binary(unsigned char c)
{
 unsigned char i1 = (1 << (sizeof(c)*8-1));
 for(; i1; i1 >>= 1)
      printf("%d",(c&i1)!=0);
}

void get_binary(unsigned char c, unsigned char bin[])
{
 unsigned char i1 = (1 << (sizeof(c)*8-1)), i2=0;
 for(; i1; i1>>=1, i2++)
      bin[i2] = ((c&i1)!=0);
}

Answer 2

/* Convert an int to it's binary representation */

char *int2bin(int num, int pad)
{
 char *str = malloc(sizeof(char) * (pad+1));
  if (str) {
   str[pad]='\0';
   while (--pad>=0) {
    str[pad] = num & 1 ? '1' : '0';
    num >>= 1;
   }
  } else {
   return "";
  }
 return str;
}

/* example usage */

printf("The number 5 in binary is %s", int2bin(5, 4));
/* "The number 5 in binary is 0101" */

Answer 3

I optimized the top solution for size and C++-ness, and got to this solution:

inline std::string format_binary(unsigned int x)
{
    static char b[33];
    b[32] = '\0';

    for (int z = 0; z < 32; z++) {
        b[31-z] = ((x>>z) & 0x1) ? '1' : '0';
    }

    return b;
}

Answer 4

Hacky but works for me:

#define BYTE_TO_BINARY_PATTERN "%c%c%c%c%c%c%c%c"
#define BYTE_TO_BINARY(byte)  \
  (byte & 0x80 ? '1' : '0'), \
  (byte & 0x40 ? '1' : '0'), \
  (byte & 0x20 ? '1' : '0'), \
  (byte & 0x10 ? '1' : '0'), \
  (byte & 0x08 ? '1' : '0'), \
  (byte & 0x04 ? '1' : '0'), \
  (byte & 0x02 ? '1' : '0'), \
  (byte & 0x01 ? '1' : '0') 

printf("Leading text "BYTE_TO_BINARY_PATTERN, BYTE_TO_BINARY(byte));

For multi-byte types

printf("m: "BYTE_TO_BINARY_PATTERN" "BYTE_TO_BINARY_PATTERN"\n",
  BYTE_TO_BINARY(m>>8), BYTE_TO_BINARY(m));

You need all the extra quotes unfortunately. This approach has the efficiency risks of macros (don't pass a function as the argument to BYTE_TO_BINARY) but avoids the memory issues and multiple invocations of strcat in some of the other proposals here.

Answer 5

const char* byte_to_binary( int x )
{
    static char b[sizeof(int)*8+1] = {0};
    int y;
    long long z;
    for (z=1LL<<sizeof(int)*8-1,y=0; z>0; z>>=1,y++)
    {
        b[y] = ( ((x & z) == z) ? '1' : '0');
    }

    b[y] = 0;

    return b;
}

Answer 6

void
print_binary(unsigned int n)
{
    unsigned int mask = 0;
    /* this grotesque hack creates a bit pattern 1000... */
    /* regardless of the size of an unsigned int */
    mask = ~mask ^ (~mask >> 1);

    for(; mask != 0; mask >>= 1) {
        putchar((n & mask) ? '1' : '0');
    }

}