Section 2 / Bit Fields

Overview

Many C and C++ programmers have never seen bit fields.

Bit fields are a feature of the C and C++ language which completely hide what is often called "bit bashing".

Bit bashing is the manipulation of individual bits. Bit bashing goes to the very core of the C language. Remember that C is a high level assembly language, as we argue in Section 1 of this book. And C is the (later) language in which Unix was implemented and indeed, C was developed specifically to implement Unix.

Since an operating system directly interfaces with hardware - the C language grew to have features to aid Unix implementers.

With that said, consider this WARNING: the ordering of bits in a bit field is not guaranteed to be the same on different platforms and even between different compilers on the same platform.

Bit fields are implemented within a struct by appending a colon plus a number after the declaration of integer types.

For example:

struct BF {
    unsigned char a : 1;
    unsigned char b : 2;
    unsigned char c : 5;
};

The above declares a struct whose size is 1 byte. Members of the struct are a, b and c which are 1, 2 and 5 bits in size, respectively.

Bit Fields Aren't Just For Hardware

Consider a data structure for which there will be potentially millions of instances in RAM. Or, perhaps billions of instances on disc. Suppose you need 8 boolean members in every instance. The C++ standard does not define the size of a bool instead leaving it to be implementation dependent. Some implementations equate bool to int, four bytes in length. Some implement bool with a char, or 1 byte in length.

Let's assume the smallest case and equate a bool with char. Our struct, for which there may be millions or billions of instances requires 8 bool so therefore 8 bytes. Times millions or billions.

Ouch.

Bit fields can come to your aid here by using a single bit per boolean value. In the best case, 8 bytes collapse to 1 byte. In a worse case, 8 x 4 = 32 bytes collapsed into 1.

Without Bit Fields

Let's assume we're working with a byte that is comprised of three fields layed out as in struct BF above. That is, a one, two and five bit field inside one byte.

Without bit fields, we would have to write this code:

/*  Note the absence of defensive programming such as checking
    to ensure that byte is not null and that bit_number is not
    too large.
*/

void ClearA(unsigned char * byte) {
    *byte &= ~1;
}

void SetA(unsigned char * byte) {
    *byte &= ~1;
    *byte |= 1;
}

void ClearB(unsigned char * byte) {
    *byte &= ~6;
}

void SetB(unsigned char * byte, unsigned char value) {
    value &= 3;             // ensures only bits 0 and 1 can be set
    *byte &= ~6;            // clears bits 1 and 2 in byte
    *byte |= (value << 1);  // stores bits 0 and 1 into bits 2 and 3
}

void ClearC(unsigned char * byte) {
    *byte &= 7;             // squashes bits 3 to 7 to 0
}

void SetC(unsigned char * byte, unsigned char value) {
    value &= 0x1F;          // ensures only bits 0 to 4 can be set
    *byte &= ~(0x1F << 3);  // squashes correct bits in byte
    *byte |= (value << 3);  // or's in the bits at the right place
}

In naive assembly language, these functions would look like this:

3.3 KiB Raw Blame History

Section 2 / Bit Fields

Overview

Bit Fields Aren't Just For Hardware

Without Bit Fields

3.3 KiB

Raw Blame History