BIVBlog #46: Bitwise Operators in C (not only) for Microcontrollers

While bitwise operators are a core feature of the C language for anyone doing low level programming, people who know C mostly from application development sometimes struggle to come to grips with them. This quick primer explains some idioms commonly seen with microcontrollers as well as any other low level C programming.

So if you don’t really know what the bitwise operators are, or what they could possibly be good for, this is for you.

Table of Contents

00:00:40 Logical vs. bitwise operators
00:03:15 Left and right shift operators (<< and >>)
00:05:45 Using shift operators to manipulate individual bits in an integral type
00:07:05 Performance considerations, and what optimizing compilers do
00:08:20 Manipulating multiple bits simultaneously
00:09:00 Other not so obvious idioms

References

Follow-up is at BIVBlog #47: Better Ways to Manipulate Bits in C (not only) for Microcontrollers.

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