How to print (using cout) a number in binary form?
The easiest way is probably to create an std::bitset
representing the value, then stream that to cout
.
#include <bitset>
...
char a = -58;
std::bitset<8> x(a);
std::cout << x << '\n';
short c = -315;
std::bitset<16> y(c);
std::cout << y << '\n';
Use on-the-fly conversion to std::bitset
. No temporary variables, no loops, no functions, no macros.
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#include <iostream>
#include <bitset>
int main() {
int a = -58, b = a>>3, c = -315;
std::cout << "a = " << std::bitset<8>(a) << std::endl;
std::cout << "b = " << std::bitset<8>(b) << std::endl;
std::cout << "c = " << std::bitset<16>(c) << std::endl;
}
Prints:
a = 11000110
b = 11111000
c = 1111111011000101
In C++20 you'll be able to use std::format
to do this:
unsigned char a = -58;
std::cout << std::format("{:b}", a);
Output:
11000110
In the meantime you can use the {fmt} library, std::format
is based on. {fmt} also provides the print
function that makes this even easier and more efficient (godbolt):
unsigned char a = -58;
fmt::print("{:b}", a);
Disclaimer: I'm the author of {fmt} and C++20 std::format
.
If you want to display the bit representation of any object, not just an integer, remember to reinterpret as a char array first, then you can print the contents of that array, as hex, or even as binary (via bitset):
#include <iostream>
#include <bitset>
#include <climits>
template<typename T>
void show_binrep(const T& a)
{
const char* beg = reinterpret_cast<const char*>(&a);
const char* end = beg + sizeof(a);
while(beg != end)
std::cout << std::bitset<CHAR_BIT>(*beg++) << ' ';
std::cout << '\n';
}
int main()
{
char a, b;
short c;
a = -58;
c = -315;
b = a >> 3;
show_binrep(a);
show_binrep(b);
show_binrep(c);
float f = 3.14;
show_binrep(f);
}
Note that most common systems are little-endian, so the output of show_binrep(c)
is not the 1111111 011000101 you expect, because that's not how it's stored in memory. If you're looking for value representation in binary, then a simple cout << bitset<16>(c)
works.
Is there a standard way in C++ to show the binary representation in memory of a number [...]?
No. There's no std::bin
, like std::hex
or std::dec
, but it's not hard to output a number binary yourself:
You output the left-most bit by masking all the others, left-shift, and repeat that for all the bits you have.
(The number of bits in a type is sizeof(T) * CHAR_BIT
.)