python and bit shifts and byte order, oh my!
Grant Edwards
grante at visi.com
Fri Sep 10 13:40:02 EDT 2004
On 2004-09-10, Reid Nichol <rnichol_rrc at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> CPUs differ in the way integers are stored in memory. But the shift
>> operators of the CPU are implemented to work on logical integers in
>> registers, not on consecutive bytes in memory.
>
> I'm wondering because the file format I'm trying to write uses
> bit-packing, so I need to be able to write, for example, a 5 bit integer
> to the disk.
I presume by "to disk" you mean to a file in a filesystem.
You can't do that under any OS and filesystem with which I'm
familiar. You can only write an integral number of bytes to a
file. You can only write an integral number of blocks to disk
(a block is 512 bytes, typically)
> I do think regardless of language I'm going to have an unfun
> time doing this. But, since cross platform is a want
> approching a need, I'd like to use Python.
>
> Would getting a specific bit from the integer be the same or
> would I have to worry about the byte-order?
You only have to worry about byte order when reading/writing
binary objects from/to a file.
> ie Would:
> x & SOMEBIT
> be portable?
Yes, that's portable.
The code that writes x to a file and reads it from a file is
what you have to worry about.
--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! Put FIVE DOZEN red
at GIRDLES in each CIRCULAR
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