Question

I’ve been writing a program in C to move the first 4 bits of a char to the end and the last 4 to the start. For most values it works normally, as well as the reverse operation, but for some values, as 8, x, y, z, it gives as result a 32 bit value. Values checked through printing hex value of the variable. Can anybody explain why this is happening?

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main()
{
    char o, f,a=15;
    scanf("%c",&o);
    printf("o= %d\n",o);
    f=o&a;
    o=o>>4;
    printf("o= %d",o);
    o=o|(f<<4);
    printf("o= %x, size=%d\n",o,sizeof(o));
    f=o&a;
    o=o>>4;
    printf("o= %d",o);
    o=o|(f<<4);
    printf("o= %x, size=%d\n",o,sizeof(o));
    return 0;
}

Answer 1

Passing o as an argument to printf() results in an automatic conversion to int, which is apparently 32-bit on your system. The automatic conversion uses sign-extension, so if bit 7 in o is set, bits 8-31 in the converted result will be set, which will explain what you are seeing.

You could use unsigned char instead of char to avoid this. Or pass o & 0xff to printf().