Breaking up a LPARAM variable & looking at groups of bits

Question

I know that a LPARAM variable has certain bits set(inside it) that identify information such as long key presses & etc. when I receive a WM_KEYDOWN event.

So I a

Answer 1

A much easier way is to declare your own structure.

// information about key
union KeyInfo
{
  // LPARAM
  LPARAM lParam;

  // bit-field
  struct Bits {
    WORD nRepeatCount: 16;
    BYTE nScanCode : 8;
    BYTE nExtended : 1;
    BYTE nReserved : 4;
    BYTE nContext : 1;
    BYTE nPrevious : 1;
    BYTE nTransition : 1;
  };
};

That said, it's still a good idea to learn bit-arithmetic & as someone in the thread said there is a wealth of resources for this on the internet that can be found via Google.

EDIT: See this link which basically shows how to do what I just did.