What is the best way to set a particular bit in a variable in C

Question

Consider a variable unsigned int a; in C.

Now say I want to set any i\'th bit in this variable to \'1\'.

Note that the variable has some value.

Answer 1

You could probably use

a |= (1 << i)

But it won't make much of a difference. Performance-wise, you shouldn't see any difference.

You might be able to try building a table where you map i to a bit mask (like 2 => 0x0010 for 0000000000100), but that's a bit unnecessary.