Iterate through bits in C

Question

I have a big char *str where the first 8 chars (which equals 64 bits if I'm not wrong), represents a bitmap. Is there any way to iterate through these 8 chars and see which bits are 0? I'm having alot of trouble understanding the concept of bits, as you can't "see" them in the code, so I can't think of any way to do this.

Answer 1

Imagine you have only one byte, a single char my_char. You can test for individual bits using bitwise operators and bit shifts.

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unsigned char my_char = 0xAA;
int what_bit_i_am_testing = 0;

while (what_bit_i_am_testing < 8) {
  if (my_char & 0x01) {
     printf("bit %d is 1\n", what_bit_i_am_testing);
  }
  else {
     printf("bit %d is 0\n", what_bit_i_am_testing);
  }

  what_bit_i_am_testing++;
  my_char = my_char >> 1;
}

The part that must be new to you, is the >> operator. This operator will "insert a zero on the left and push every bit to the right, and the rightmost will be thrown away".

That was not a very technical description for a right bit shift of 1.

Answer 2

It's true for little-endian memory architecture:

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const int cBitmapSize = 8;
const int cBitsCount = cBitmapSize * 8;
const unsigned char cBitmap[cBitmapSize] = /* some data */;

for(int n = 0; n < cBitsCount; n++)
{
  unsigned char Mask = 1 << (n % 8);
  if(cBitmap[n / 8] & Mask)
  {
    // if n'th bit is 1...
  }
}