Smallest data type - can I define a one bit variable? [duplicate]

Answer 1

The portable way is the definition of a variable which individual bits are used as flags.

    #define FLAG_FOO 0
    #define FLAG_BAR 1

    // in case platform does not support uint8_t
    typedef unsigned char uint8_t;

    uint8_t flags;

    void flag_foo_set()
    {
        flags |= (1 << FLAG_FOO);
    }

    void flag_foo_clr()
    {
        flags &= ~(1 << FLAG_FOO);
    }

    uint8_t flag_foo_get()
    {
        return flags & (1 << FLAG_FOO);
    }

While this can seem superfluos compared to C bit fields. It is portable to basically every ANSI C compiler.