Re: Bit twiddling
*** T. Winter wrote:
In article <ln1x7jb47t.fsf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Keith Thompson <kst-u@xxxxxxx> writes:
> Whether bit 0 is the least or most significant bit is probably
> system-specific; the bits in a 32-bit word might be numbered 0..31 or
> 31..0. Which way they're numbered is probably more a matter of
> terminology than actual semantics, unless the CPU provides
> instructions that take bit numbers as arguments.
And if the instructions are consistent. That is not the case with all
processors...
IBM machines derived from S/360 consistently number them with the
MSB as zero. The terminology gets a little confusing now that the
architecture has been extended to 64 bits. The old instructions now
operate on bits 32-63 of the general registers.
-- glen
.
