Question

I’m looking for an operator based way of working with bit masks and bitwise boolean operations (XOR / NOR / OR / AND / NOT / EQV / etc). Generally I really like an extension method style approach, but in this case, I find it a little messy.

Is there a terser way of working with bits in C#?

        BitArray a = new BitArray(0x001);
        BitArray b = new BitArray(0x100);
        BitArray c = new BitArray(0x010);

        BitArray test = a | b;   // won't compile
        BitArray test2 = a ^ c;  // won't compile

        BitArray test3 = a.Or(b);   // compiles
        BitArray test4 = a.Xor(c);  // compiles

Answer 1

There’s no way of doing it directly with BitArray – but you could always create a wrapper class which contained a BitArray, and define your own operators there.

Of course, if you’re dealing with 64 bits or fewer, you could just use a long or ulong and be done with it…