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From: "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Bit operations in Ada
Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 19:27:48 -0500
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"Robert A Duff" <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com> wrote in message 
news:wcc63t4ejd1.fsf@shell01.TheWorld.com...
> Dennis Hoppe <dennis.hoppe@hoppinet.de> writes:
>
>> I'm new to Ada and bitwise operations is a new challenge in this
>> realm. My objective is to manipulate some bit strings in Ada, especially:
>>
>> a) addition/subtraction mod 2**n,
>> b) change bits directly (e.g, via array access)
>> c) shift operations
>> d) rotate operations
>> e) and, xor, not, or
>
> I'm curious why you want to do all these things on the same type.
> You say, "My objective is...", but what's the higher-level objective?

I agree with Bob. Most of the time, you are better off not doing bit 
operations explicitly at all in Ada: let the compiler do them instead. That 
is to say, use record types and representation clauses to specify the 
structures you need, and let the compiler do all of the work.

For instance, I have a card game evaluation program that starts like this:

    type Suits is (Hearts, Diamonds, Spades, Clubs);
    subtype Red_Suits is Suits range Hearts .. Diamonds;
    subtype Black_Suits is Suits range Spades .. Clubs;

    type Pips is (Empty, Ace, Deuce, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, 
Nine, Ten,
        Jack, Queen, King);

    type Card_Type is record
        Pip  : Pips;
        Suit : Suits;
    end record;
    for Card_Type use record
        Pip at 0 range 0 .. 3;
        Suit at 0 range 4 .. 5;
    end record;
    for Card_Type'Size use 6;

    NO_CARD : constant Card_Type := (Suit => Hearts, Pip => Empty);

    type Card_Array_Type is array (Natural range <>) of Card_Type;
    for Card_Array_Type'Component_Size use 6;

This lets code find out the suit or pip value of a card separately, while 
still providing a convinient way to do operations on a whole card or list of 
cards. And with little waste of space.

(I should point out that the application actually ended up using a different 
way to compress arrays of cards, using knowledge of the starting position to 
save lots more space, and ultimately, Card_Array_Type was changed to use 8 
bit elements for better performance. Beware of premature optimization.)

There are a few cases where you really need to use shifts explicitly 
(encryption comes to mind), but then the need for single bit access is 
non-existent. In those cases, the modular types in Interfaces are your best 
bet.

                              Randy.