Question

I want reverse the binary

unsigned short gf_t  = 44 // = 00101100

in 00110100 in C language. How i will able to for that using bitwise operators?

pdta: My computer have 32 bits pattern.

Answer 1

When in doubt, see the Bit Twiddling Hacks page. In fact, there you can find a very simple algorithm that does what you want…

Reverse bits the obvious way

unsigned int v;     // input bits to be reversed
unsigned int r = v; // r will be reversed bits of v; first get LSB of v
int s = sizeof(v) * CHAR_BIT - 1; // extra shift needed at end

for (v >>= 1; v; v >>= 1)
{   
  r <<= 1;
  r |= v & 1;
  s--;
}
r <<= s; // shift when v's highest bits are zero 

On October 15, 2004, Michael Hoisie pointed out a bug in the original version. Randal E. Bryant suggested removing an extra operation on May 3, 2005. Behdad Esfabod suggested a slight change that eliminated one iteration of the loop on May 18, 2005. Then, on February 6, 2007, Liyong Zhou suggested a better version that loops while v is not 0, so rather than iterating over all bits it stops early.

There is also, however, several nifty approaches documented there. You can look into those and try to understand them for learning 🙂 For example, here is one particular interesting form…

Reverse an N-bit quantity in parallel in 5 * lg(N) operations:

unsigned int v; // 32-bit word to reverse bit order

// swap odd and even bits
v = ((v >> 1) & 0x55555555) | ((v & 0x55555555) << 1);
// swap consecutive pairs
v = ((v >> 2) & 0x33333333) | ((v & 0x33333333) << 2);
// swap nibbles ... 
v = ((v >> 4) & 0x0F0F0F0F) | ((v & 0x0F0F0F0F) << 4);
// swap bytes
v = ((v >> 8) & 0x00FF00FF) | ((v & 0x00FF00FF) << 8);
// swap 2-byte long pairs
v = ( v >> 16             ) | ( v               << 16);

Note that if sizeof(unsigned short) * CHAR_BIT is 16, the appropriate usage would only require the first 4 transpositions — see as follows:

unsigned short v;

// swap odd and even bits
v = ((v >> 1) & 0x5555) | ((v & 0x5555) << 1);
// swap consecutive pairs
v = ((v >> 2) & 0x3333) | ((v & 0x3333) << 2);
// swap nibbles ... 
v = ((v >> 4) & 0x0F0F) | ((v & 0x0F0F) << 4);
// swap bytes
v = ((v >> 8) & 0x00FF) | ((v & 0x00FF) << 8);

That being said, why not just use uint16_t (if it’s available)?

Here is working example (see ideone):

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

inline uint16_t reverse(uint16_t v) {
  v = ((v >> 1) & 0x5555) | ((v & 0x5555) << 1); /* swap odd/even bits */
  v = ((v >> 2) & 0x3333) | ((v & 0x3333) << 2); /* swap bit pairs */
  v = ((v >> 4) & 0x0F0F) | ((v & 0x0F0F) << 4); /* swap nibbles */
  v = ((v >> 8) & 0x00FF) | ((v & 0x00FF) << 8); /* swap bytes */
  return v;
}

main() {
  uint16_t gf_t = 44;
  printf("%hu\n", reverse(gf_t));
}