Is there a printf converter to print in binary format?

Question

I can print with printf as a hex or octal number. Is there a format tag to print as binary, or arbitrary base?

I am running gcc.

printf(\"%d %x %o         


        

Answer 1

Print bits from any type using less code and resources

This approach has as attributes:

• Works with variables and literals.
• Doesn't iterate all bits when not necessary.
• Call printf only when complete a byte (not unnecessarily for all bits).
• Works for any type.
• Works with little and big endianness (uses GCC #defines for checking).
• Uses typeof() that isn't C standard but is largely defined.

#include 
#include 
#include 

#if __BYTE_ORDER__ == __ORDER_BIG_ENDIAN__
#define for_endian(size) for (int i = 0; i < size; ++i)
#elif __BYTE_ORDER__ == __ORDER_LITTLE_ENDIAN__
#define for_endian(size) for (int i = size - 1; i >= 0; --i)
#else
#error "Endianness not detected"
#endif

#define printb(value)                                   \
({                                                      \
        typeof(value) _v = value;                       \
        __printb((typeof(_v) *) &_v, sizeof(_v));       \
})

void __printb(void *value, size_t size)
{
        uint8_t byte;
        size_t blen = sizeof(byte) * 8;
        uint8_t bits[blen + 1];

        bits[blen] = '\0';
        for_endian(size) {
                byte = ((uint8_t *) value)[i];
                memset(bits, '0', blen);
                for (int j = 0; byte && j < blen; ++j) {
                        if (byte & 0x80)
                                bits[j] = '1';
                        byte <<= 1;
                }
                printf("%s ", bits);
        }
        printf("\n");
}

int main(void)
{
        uint8_t c1 = 0xff, c2 = 0x44;
        uint8_t c3 = c1 + c2;

        printb(c1);
        printb((char) 0xff);
        printb((short) 0xff);
        printb(0xff);
        printb(c2);
        printb(0x44);
        printb(0x4411ff01);
        printb((uint16_t) c3);
        printf("\n");

        return 0;
}

Output

$ ./printb 
11111111 
11111111 
00000000 11111111 
00000000 00000000 00000000 11111111 
01000100 
00000000 00000000 00000000 01000100 
01000100 00010001 11111111 00000001 
00000000 01000011 

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I have used another approach (bitprint.h) to fill a table with all bytes (as bit strings) and print them based on the input/index byte. It's worth taking a look.