C binary literals

Question

Is there a way to write binary literals in C   like prefixing hexadecimal with 0x  0b doesn t work   If not  what is an easy way to do it  Some kind of string conversion

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Adding to  StriplingWarrior s answer about bit flags in enums  there s an easy convention you can use in hexadecimal for counting upwards through the bit shifts  Use the sequence 1-2-4-8  move one column to the left  and repeat    Flags  enum Scenery     Trees     0x001     000000000001   Grass     0x002     000000000010   Flowers   0x004     000000000100   Cactus    0x008     000000001000   Birds     0x010     000000010000   Bushes    0x020     000000100000   Shrubs    0x040     000001000000   Trails    0x080     000010000000   Ferns     0x100     000100000000   Rocks     0x200     001000000000   Animals   0x400     010000000000   Moss      0x800     100000000000     Scan down starting with the right column and notice the pattern 1-2-4-8  shift  1-2-4-8  shift         To answer the original question  I second  Sahuagin s suggestion to use hexadecimal literals  If you re working with binary numbers often enough for this to be a concern  it s worth your while to get the hang of hexadecimal   If you need to see binary numbers in source code  I suggest adding comments with binary literals like I have above

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You can always create quasi-literals  constants which contain the value you are after   const int b001   1  const int b010   2  const int b011   3     etc     Debug Assert  b001   b010     b011     If you use them often then you can wrap them in a static class for re-use    However  slightliy off-topic  if you have any semantics associated with the bits  known at compile time  I would suggest using an Enum instead   enum Flags        First   0      Second   1      Third   2      SecondAndThird   3      later     Debug Assert  Flags Second   Flags Third     Flags SecondAndThird

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While not possible using a Literal  maybe a BitConverter can also be a solution

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Binary literal feature was not implemented in C  6 0  amp  Visual Studio 2015  but on 30-March 2016 Microsoft announced the new version of Visual Studio  15  Preview with that we can use binary literals   We can use one or more than one Underscore      character for digit separators  so the code snippet would look something like   int x             0b10   10 0                  00    binary value of 80 int SeventyFive   0B100         1011    binary value of 75  WriteLine     x   n  SeventyFive       and we can use either of 0b and 0B as shown in the above code snippet    if you do not want to use digit separator you can use it without digit separator like below code snippet  int x             0b1010000    binary value of 80 int SeventyFive   0B1001011    binary value of 75  WriteLine     x   n  SeventyFive

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Basically  I think the answer is NO  there is no easy way  Use decimal or hexadecimal constants - they are simple and clear   RoyTinkers answer is also good - use a comment   int someHexFlag   0x010     000000010000 int someDecFlag   8         000000001000   The others answers here present several useful work-a rounds  but I think they aren t better then the simple answer  C  language designers probably considered a  0b  prefix unnecessary  HEX is easy to convert to binary  and most programmers are going to have to know the DEC equivalents of 0-8 anyways     Also  when examining values in the debugger  they will be displayed has HEX or DEC

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C  7 0 supports binary literals  and optional digit separators via underscore characters    An example   int myValue   0b0010 0110 0000 0011    You can also find more information on the Roslyn GitHub page

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You can use 0b000001 since Visual Studio 2017  C  7 0

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Though the string parsing solution is the most popular  I don t like it  because parsing string can be a great performance hit in some situations   When there is needed a kind of a bitfield or binary mask  I d rather write it like     long bitMask   1011001    And later     int bit5   BitField GetBit bitMask  5     Or     bool flag5   BitField GetFlag bitMask  5      Where BitField class is  public static class BitField       public static int GetBit int bitField  int index                return  bitField    int Math Pow 10  index     10             public static bool GetFlag int bitField  int index                return GetBit bitField  index     1

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string sTable  static class BinaryTable r n    string stemp       for  int i   0  i  lt  256  i      stemp   System Convert ToString i  2   while stemp Length lt 8  stemp    0    stemp  sTable      tconst char nb    stemp         i ToString        r n     sTable         Clipboard Clear    Clipboard SetText   sTable   MessageBox Show sTable     Using this  for 8bit binary  I use this to make a static class and it puts it into the clipboard   Then it gets pasted into the project and added to the Using section  so anything with nb001010 is taken out of a table  at least static  but still     I use C  for a lot of PIC graphics coding and use 0b101010 a lot in Hi-Tech C  --sample from code outpt--  static class BinaryTable     const char nb00000000 0      const char nb00000001 1      const char nb00000010 2      const char nb00000011 3      const char nb00000100 4    etc  etc  etc  etc  etc  etc  etc        -  NEAL

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Update  C  7 0 now has binary literals  which is awesome    Flags  enum Days       None   0      Sunday      0b0000001      Monday      0b0000010       2     Tuesday     0b0000100       4     Wednesday   0b0001000       8     Thursday    0b0010000       16     Friday      0b0100000       etc      Saturday    0b1000000      Weekend   Saturday   Sunday      Weekdays   Monday   Tuesday   Wednesday   Thursday   Friday     Original Post  Since the topic seems to have turned to declaring bit-based flag values in enums  I thought it would be worth pointing out a handy trick for this sort of thing  The left-shift operator   lt  lt   will allow you to push a bit to a specific binary position  Combine that with the ability to declare enum values in terms of other values in the same class  and you have a very easy-to-read declarative syntax for bit flag enums    Flags  enum Days       None          0      Sunday        1      Monday        1  lt  lt  1       2     Tuesday       1  lt  lt  2       4     Wednesday     1  lt  lt  3       8     Thursday      1  lt  lt  4       16     Friday        1  lt  lt  5       etc      Saturday      1  lt  lt  6      Weekend       Saturday   Sunday      Weekdays      Monday   Tuesday   Wednesday   Thursday   Friday

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Only integer and hex directly  I m afraid  ECMA 334v4       9 4 4 2 Integer literals Integer literals are used to write values of   types int  uint  long  and ulong    Integer literals have two possible   forms  decimal and hexadecimal    To parse  you can use   int i   Convert ToInt32  01101101   2

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If you look at the language feature implementation status of the  NET Compiler Platform   Roslyn   you can clearly see that in C  6 0 this is a planned feature  so in the next release we can do it in the usual way

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