Integer subtraction with wrap around for N bits

Question

Basically, the behavior you get when overflowing integers with subtraction, but for a given number of bits. The obvious way, assuming a signed integer:

Answer 1

This simulates an n bit integer operation:

#include 
#include 

template< typename T >
T sub_wrap(T a, T b, int nBits)
{
        T topBit, mask, tmp;

        topBit=T(1) << (nBits-1);
        mask=(topBit << 1)-1;
        tmp=((a&mask)+((~b+1)&mask))&mask;
        if (tmp & topBit) tmp=-((~tmp&mask)+1);

        return tmp;
}

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
        std::cout << sub_wrap< int >(atoi(argv[1]), atoi(argv[2]), atoi(argv[3]))
                << std::endl;
        return 0;
}

Results:

$ ./sim 5 6 4
-1
$ ./sim 7 3 4
4
$ ./sim 7 -1 4
-8
$ ./sim -16 28 4
4
$ ./sim -16 28 5
-12
$ ./sim -16 28 6
20

Seems you miscalculated your type size by 1 bit.