I made this article quite a while ago to make it easier to work with binary strings, you may find it of some use. I also tried to output all byte array as a hex array, like this (this gives me ASCII codes of bytes in a hex format): (getHexString(arrayOfBytes)) These two ways give me different results and I am not sure which one is the REAL ONE :) I know there are plenty ways of how one can understand a byte but. It was designed around the common format of IBM punched cards, which it was designed to process these had ten 'digit' rows and two 'zone' rows, of which one digit and optionally one zone (for which the zero row also counted as a third zone) could be punched simultaneously in. If you want to work with binary values directly, unfortunately there is no binary literal in C#. The well-known IBM 1401 technically had a 7-bit byte (plus parity). By ANDing that with the original integer, we can check if the bit is setĬonsole.WriteLine( ' Base Value = ', otherValue & ( byte)(Bits.Bit0 | Bits.Bit1)) So, shifting 1 left by N will give us a binary pattern where only the Nth bit is set. Those numbers are in binary format by the way. So 1 << 5 would result in 100000, 1 << 2 would result in 100, etc.

It will perform a left binary shift on the left operand. To get this, we just use the << operator. In most of the modern computers and computer architectures, a byte is considered the minimal addressable sequence of a fixed number of bits. Now we just have to get a binary pattern to use against the AND. A byte is a unit for data volume composed of 8 bits, therefore, it can take one of 256 different combinations (codes).The unit was introduced in the middle of the 20 th century and has got a symbol of B. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit of memory in many computer architectures. So, we can apply this further, and say that if q AND n is equal to n, then bit n was set. The byte (/bat/) is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Now, unfortunately, you don't get a true or false value. You use the AND against a bit pattern to see if that bit is set. For example, 39 AND 4 would be worked out like so:Īs you can see, you end up with a binary sequence, which is represented by 4 in decimal (base-10). To get a bit, you have to AND it, which gets all the bits which are set in both of the numbers given to it.

For example, 39 would be represented by 100111.

Basically, you use the formula:īitNSet = (originalInteger & (1 << N) = 1 << N)Įffectively, every integer is represented by a binary sequence. If you enter 1, This will give the output − 4īecause 110 becomes 100 which is equivalent to 4 in decimal.It's a matter of using ANDs, and other boolean stuff (if you want to read multiple bits). I ^= (1 << n) // Take XOR of i and 1 shifted n positions Assuming you used the de facto standard of eight bits in one byte, you could calculate the bits of a document by multiplying. However, the size of a byte is not defined by any standard. To set a bit, we'll need to use the bitwise OR operator − Example #include How large is a byte The size of a byte depends on the computer hardware. You also need to use the bitshift operator to get the bit to the right place. These are called the binary digits, which is normally abbreviated to bit. You can set clear and toggle bits using bitwise operators in C, C++, Python, and all other programming languages that support these operations. When counting in binary, you only use the digits 1 and 0.

Bits in a byte