bitter Bit Manipulation Library

bitter provides a common interface for bit operations on integral types as well as std::bitset. If you have ever worked with bitset before the interface should feel instantly familiar.

Motivation

Often many ways lead to Rome, but some might be more efficient than others. Unfortunately, this is particularly true for bit operations. bitter prevents you from reinventing the wheel over and over again by providing efficient and well tested implementations for most bit operations. This will also help to make your code more expressive. What would you rather read:

int _t = 0xdeadface
int s = 64;
int mask = ~0;
while (s >>= 1) {
	mask ^= (mask << s);
	_t = ((_t >> s) & mask) | ((_t << s) & ~mask);
}
int const t = _t;

or

int const t = bit::reverse(0xdeadface);

(Note, that the former implementation is already pretty concise) ? Now, imagine many similar but slightly different implementations like this intermingled with many other bit operations spread across your code base.

Finally, bitter enables you to mix integral and std::bitset types arbitrarily and/or switch from one to the other without breaking code.

Using bitter

bitter is a header only library, which makes it pretty easy to use. It should be enough to add bitter to the include path and enable your compiler's C++11 mode.

Requirements

• modern C++11 compiler

Licensing

Copyright 2013, Sebastian Jeltsch ([email protected])

bitter is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

bitter is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with bitter. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.