Is there a way to access individual bits with a union?

Question

I am writing a C program. I want a variable that I can access as a char but I can also access the specific bits of. I was thinking I could use a union like this...

Answer 1

As has already been stated, you can't address memory smaller than a byte in C. I would write a macro:

#define BIT(n) (1 << n)

and use it to access the bits. That way, your access is the same, regardless of the size of the structure you're accessing. You would write your code as:

if (status & BIT(1)) {
   // Do something if bit 1 is set
} elseif (~status | BIT(2) {
   // Do something else if bit 2 is cleared
} else  {
   // Set bits 1 and 2
   status |= BIT(1) | BIT(2)
   // Clear bits 0 and 4
   status &= ~(BIT(0) | BIT(4))
   // Toggle bit 5 
   status ^= BIT(5)
}

This gets you access close to your proposed system, which would use [] instead of ().