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 <stdio.h>
#include <stdint.h>
#include <string.h>

#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 

---

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.

Answer 2

Here is a quick hack to demonstrate the techniques for what you want.

#include <stdio.h>   /* printf */
#include <string.h>  /* strcat */
#include <stdlib.h>  /* strtol */

const char *byte_to_binary(int x)
{
    static char b[9];
    b[0] = '\0';

    int z;
    for (z = 128; z > 0; z >>= 1) {
        strcat(b, ((x & z) == z) ? "1" : "0");
    }

    return b;
}

int main(void) {
    {
        /* binary string to int */
        char *tmp;
        char *b = "0101";
        printf("%d\n", strtol(b, &tmp, 2));
    }
    {
        /* byte to binary string */
        printf("%s\n", byte_to_binary(5));
    }
    return 0;
}

Answer 3

Some runtimes support "%b" although that is not a standard.

Also see here for an interesting discussion:

http://bytes.com/forum/thread591027.html

HTH

Answer 4

void
print_binary(unsigned int n)
{
    unsigned int mask = 0;
    /* this grotesque hack creates a bit pattern 1000... */
    /* regardless of the size of an unsigned int */
    mask = ~mask ^ (~mask >> 1);

    for(; mask != 0; mask >>= 1) {
        putchar((n & mask) ? '1' : '0');
    }

}

Answer 5

One statement generic conversion of any integral type into the binary string representation using standard library:

#include <bitset>
MyIntegralType  num = 10;
print("%s\n",
    std::bitset<sizeof(num) * 8>(num).to_string().insert(0, "0b").c_str()
); // prints "0b1010\n"

Or just: std::cout << std::bitset<sizeof(num) * 8>(num);

Answer 6

Here is a small variation of paniq's solution that uses templates to allow printing of 32 and 64 bit integers:

template<class T>
inline std::string format_binary(T x)
{
    char b[sizeof(T)*8+1] = {0};

    for (size_t z = 0; z < sizeof(T)*8; z++)
        b[sizeof(T)*8-1-z] = ((x>>z) & 0x1) ? '1' : '0';

    return std::string(b);
}

And can be used like:

unsigned int value32 = 0x1e127ad;
printf( "  0x%x: %s\n", value32, format_binary(value32).c_str() );

unsigned long long value64 = 0x2e0b04ce0;
printf( "0x%llx: %s\n", value64, format_binary(value64).c_str() );

Here is the result:

  0x1e127ad: 00000001111000010010011110101101
0x2e0b04ce0: 0000000000000000000000000000001011100000101100000100110011100000