Question

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Packing 4 Integers as ONE BYTE?

I have four integers {a, b, c, d} that can have the following range of values:

a – {0 or 1} (1 bit)

b – {0 or 1} (1 bit)

c – {0, 1, 2, …, 7} (3 bits)

d – {0, 1, 2, …, 7} (3 bits)

Is it possible to ‘convert’ them to ONE INTEGER (between 0 – 255) without having to do bit packing/unpacking? if so, how do I achieve this in Python?

Answer 1

Equivalently to my previous answer, but using * and + instead of << and |, you can do

i = a + 2*b + 4*c + 32*d

for packing and

a, b, c, d = i % 2, i//2 % 2, i//4 % 8, i//32 % 8

for unpacking. This does the same as the bit operations, just without using bit operations. I don’t see the point, but you asked for it.