Java: Checking if a bit is 0 or 1 in a long

Question

What method would you use to determine if the the bit that represents 2^x is a 1 or 0 ?

Answer 1

My contribution - ignore previous one

public class TestBits { 

    public static void main(String[] args) { 

        byte bit1 = 0b00000001;     
        byte bit2 = 0b00000010;
        byte bit3 = 0b00000100;
        byte bit4 = 0b00001000;
        byte bit5 = 0b00010000;
        byte bit6 = 0b00100000;
        byte bit7 = 0b01000000;

        byte myValue = 9;                        // any value

        if (((myValue >>> 3) & bit1 ) != 0) {    //  shift 3 to test bit4
            System.out.println(" ON "); 
        }
    } 
}

Answer 2

If someone is not very comfortable with bitwise operators, then below code can be tried to programatically decide it. There are two ways.

1) Use java language functionality to get the binary format string and then check character at specific position

2) Keep dividing by 2 and decide the bit value at certain position.

public static void main(String[] args) {
    Integer n =1000;
    String binaryFormat =  Integer.toString(n, 2);
    int binaryFormatLength = binaryFormat.length();
    System.out.println("binaryFormat="+binaryFormat);
    for(int i = 1;i<10;i++){
        System.out.println("isBitSet("+n+","+i+")"+isBitSet(n,i));
        System.out.println((binaryFormatLength>=i && binaryFormat.charAt(binaryFormatLength-i)=='1'));
    }

}

public static boolean isBitSet(int number, int position){
    int currPos =1;
    int temp = number;
    while(number!=0 && currPos<= position){
        if(temp%2 == 1 && currPos == position)
            return true;
        else{
            temp = temp/2;
            currPos ++;
        }
    }
    return false;
}

Output

binaryFormat=1111101000
isBitSet(1000,1)false
false
isBitSet(1000,2)false
false
isBitSet(1000,3)false
false
isBitSet(1000,4)true
true
isBitSet(1000,5)false
false
isBitSet(1000,6)true
true
isBitSet(1000,7)true
true
isBitSet(1000,8)true
true
isBitSet(1000,9)true
true

Answer 3

The value of the 2^x bit is "variable & (1 << x)"

Answer 4

For the nth LSB (least significant bit), the following should work:

boolean isSet = (value & (1 << n)) != 0;

Answer 5

I coded a little static class which is doing some of the bit operation stuff.

public final class Bitfield {

  private Bitfield() {}

  // ********************************************************************
  // * TEST
  // ********************************************************************

  public static boolean testBit(final int pos, final int bitfield) {
      return (bitfield & (1 << pos)) == (1 << pos);
  }

  public static boolean testNum(final int num, final int bitfield) {
      return (bitfield & num) == num;
  }

  // ********************************************************************
  // * SET
  // ********************************************************************

  public static int setBit(final int pos, final int bitfield) {
     return bitfield | (1 << pos);
  }

  public static int addNum(final int number, final int bitfield) {
      return bitfield | number;
  }

  // ********************************************************************
  // * CLEAR
  // ********************************************************************

  public static int clearBit(final int pos, final int bitfield) {
      return bitfield ^ (1 << pos);
  }

  public static int clearNum(final int num, final int bitfield) {
      return bitfield ^ num;
  }

  }

If there are some questions flying around, just write me an email.

Good Programming!

Answer 6

I'd use:

if ((value & (1L << x)) != 0)
{
   // The bit was set
}

(You may be able to get away with fewer brackets, but I never remember the precedence of bitwise operations.)