Work easly with bit masks in c#

January 3, 2008 at 3:05 pm · Filed under csharp

Lately I got confronted with inserting and reading selections from a byte value using bit masks. I wrote the following class that makes it easier to deal with such operations for bytes. It can be extended for other types (short, int,..)

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;

namespace Sandbox
{
    public class ByteBitVector
    {
        private byte value;

        public byte Value
        {
            get { return this.value; }
            set { this.value = value; }
        }

        public ByteBitVector(byte value)
        {
            this.value = value;
        }

        public ByteBitVector()
        {
            this.value = 0x0000;
        }

        public void InsertSection(byte section, String mask)
        {
            this.checkMask(mask);
            Console.WriteLine("mask= " + mask);

            Console.WriteLine("this.getShift(mask)= " + this.getShift(mask));
            Console.WriteLine("section= " + Convert.ToString(section,2));

            this.value += (byte)(section << this.getShift(mask));
        }

        public byte GetSection(String mask)
        {
            this.checkMask(mask);
            /*
 		 * String mask         = "-xx----"
 		 * String maskAsBitStr = "0110000"
 		*  Byte   maskAsByte   = (byte) 0110000 = 0x30
 		*/ 

            String maskAsBitStr = String.Empty;
            maskAsBitStr = mask.Replace('-', '0');
            maskAsBitStr = maskAsBitStr.Replace('x', '1');
            byte maskAsByte = Convert.ToByte(maskAsBitStr, 2);

            return (byte)(((this.value) & maskAsByte) >> this.getShift(mask));
        }

        private void checkMask(String mask)
        {
            if (8 != mask.Length)
            {
                throw new Exception("The mask length must be exactly 8!");
            }
            foreach (char c  in mask)
         {
                if ((c != '-') && (c != 'x'))
                {
                    throw new Exception("Wrong format for mask! Accepted format: ---xx---");
                }
         }
        }

        private byte getShift(String mask)
        {
            return (byte)((8-1) - mask.LastIndexOf('x'));
        }

        public void Main(String arg[])
 	{

             ByteBitVector v = new ByteBitVector();
 	     String a_mask = "xx------";
 	     String b_mask = "--xxxx--";
 	     String c_mask = "------x-";
 	     String d_mask = "-------x";

             /* sections to insert and read */
	     byte a = 0x3; //00000011
 	     byte b = 0XB; //00001011
 	     byte c = 0x1; //00000001
 	     byte d = 0x1; //00000001

             /*  inserting sections  */
 	    			         // v.Value = 0000 0000
 	     v.InsertSection(a, a_mask); // v.Value = 1100 0000
 	     v.InsertSection(b, b_mask); // v.Value = 1110 1100
 	     v.InsertSection(c, c_mask); // v.Value = 1110 1110
 	     v.InsertSection(d, d_mask); // v.Value = 1110 1111

            /*  reading sections  */
 	     Console.WriteLine("v.GetSection(a_mask) = " + Convert.ToString(v.GetSection(a_mask), 2)); //00000011 = a
 	     Console.WriteLine("v.GetSection(b_mask) = " + Convert.ToString(v.GetSection(b_mask), 2)); //00001011 = b
 	     Console.WriteLine("v.GetSection(c_mask) = " + Convert.ToString(v.GetSection(c_mask), 2)); //00000001 = c
 	     Console.WriteLine("v.GetSection(d_mask) = " + Convert.ToString(v.GetSection(d_mask), 2)); //00000001 = d

	}
    }
}

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