I want to create a custom data type which is 4 bits (nibble).
One option is this -
byte source = 0xAD;
var hiNybble = (source & 0xF0) >> 4; //Left hand nybble = A
var loNyblle = (source & 0x0F); //Right hand nybble = D
However, I want to store each 4 bits in an array.
So for example, a 2 byte array,
00001111 01010000
would be stored in the custom data type array as 4 nibbles -
0000
1111
0101
0000
Essentially I want to operate on 4 bit types.
Is there any way I can convert the array of bytes into array of nibbles?
Appreciate an example.
Thanks.
You can encapsulate a stream returning 4-bit samples by reading then converting (written from a phone without a compiler to test. Expect typos and off-by-one errors):
public static int ReadNibbles(this Stream s, byte[] data, int offset, int count)
{
if (s == null)
{
throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(s));
}
if (data == null)
{
throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(data));
}
if (data.Length < offset + length)
{
throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException(nameof(length));
}
var readBytes = s.Read(data, offset, length / 2);
for (int n = readBytes * 2 - 1, k = readBytes - 1; k >= 0; k--)
{
data[offset + n--] = data[offset + k] & 0xf;
data[offset + n--] = data[offset + k] >> 4;
}
return readBytes * 2;
}
To do the same for 12-bit integers (assuming MSB nibble ordering):
public static int Read(this Stream stream, ushort[] data, int offset, int length)
{
if (stream == null)
{
throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(stream));
}
if (data == null)
{
throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(data));
}
if (data.Length < offset + length)
{
throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException(nameof(length));
}
if (length < 2)
{
throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException(nameof(length), "Cannot read fewer than two samples at a time");
}
// we always need a multiple of two
length -= length % 2;
// 3 bytes length samples
// --------- * -------------- = N bytes
// 2 samples 1
int rawCount = (length / 2) * 3;
// This will place GC load. Something like a buffer pool or keeping
// the allocation as a field on the reader would be a good idea.
var rawData = new byte[rawCount];
int readBytes = 0;
// if the underlying stream returns an even number of bytes, we will need to try again
while (readBytes < data.Length)
{
int c = stream.Read(rawData, readBytes, rawCount - readBytes);
if (c <= 0)
{
// End of stream
break;
}
readBytes += c;
}
// unpack
int k = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < readBytes; i += 3)
{
// EOF in second byte is undefined
if (i + 1 >= readBytes)
{
throw new InvalidOperationException("Unexpected EOF");
}
data[(k++) + offset] = (ushort)((rawData[i + 0] << 4) | (rawData[i + 1] >> 4));
// EOF in third byte == only one sample
if (i + 2 < readBytes)
{
data[(k++) + offset] = (ushort)(((rawData[i + 1] & 0xf) << 8) | rawData[i + 2]);
}
}
return k;
}
The best way to do this would be to look at the source for one of the existing integral data types. For example Int16
.
If you look a that type, you can see that it implements a handful of interfaces:
[Serializable]
public struct Int16 : IComparable, IFormattable, IConvertible, IComparable<short>, IEquatable<short> { /* ... */ }
The implementation of the type isn't very complicated. It has a MaxValue
a MinValue
, a couple of CompareTo
overloads, a couple of Equals
overloads, the System.Object
overrides ( GetHashCode
, GetType
, ToString
(plus some overloads)), a handful of Parse
and ToParse
overloads and a range of IConvertible
implementations.
In other places, you can find things like arithmetic, comparison and conversion operators.
BUT :
What System.Int16
has that you can't have is this:
internal short m_value;
That's a native type (16-bit integer) member that holds the value. There is no 4-bit native type. The best you are going to be able to do is have a native byte in your implementation that will hold the value. You can write accessors that constrain it to the lower 4 bits, but you can't do much more than that. If someone creates a Nibble
array, it will be implemented as an array of those values. As far as I know, there's no way to inject your implementation into that array. Similarly, if someone creates some other collection (eg, List<Nibble>
), then the collection will be of instances of your type, each of which will take up 8 bits.
However
You can create specialized collection classes, NibbleArray
, NibbleList
, etc. C#'s syntax allows you to provide your own collection initialization implementation for a collection, your own indexing method, etc.
So, if someone does something like this:
var nyblArray = new NibbleArray(32);
nyblArray[4] = 0xd;
Then your code can, under the covers, create a 16-element byte array, set the low nibble of the third byte to 0xd.
Similarly, you can implement code to allow:
var newArray = new NibbleArray { 0x1, 0x3, 0x5, 0x7, 0x9, 0xa};
or
var nyblList = new NibbleList { 0x0, 0x2, 0xe};
A normal array will waste space, but your specialized collection classes will do what you are talking about (with the expense of some bit-twizzling).
The closest you can get to what you want is to use an indexer:
// Indexer declaration
public int this[int index]
{
// get and set accessors
}
Within the body of the indexer you can translate the index to the actual byte that contains your 4 bits.
The next thing you can do is operator overloading. You can redefine +, -, *...
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