This paper proposes to add simple free functions for basic bit operations on all unsigned integer types.
A previous proposal was in "N3864: A constexpr bitwise operations library for C++" by Matthew Fioravante.
The papers P0237Rx propose to introduce bit_value, bit_reference, and bit_iterator, higher-level concepts for manipulating individual bits and sequences of bits. In order to implement efficient standard algorithms on bit_iterator, it is expected that implementations use the facilities presented in this paper. By directly exposing the low-level facilities to programmers, they can use them for their own purposes, independent of higher-level abstractions in the standard library.
It is expected that the functions provided with this proposal will be,
at some later time, overloaded for std::datapar, the
nascent SIMD data type (see P0214R2: "Data-Parallel Vector Types &
Operations" by Matthias Kretz).
<bit> header proposed by P0237R4, or in a separate
header. Given the different levels of abstraction, a separate header
is proposed here.
The bit rotation operations are not limited to rotation counts less than the bit-width of the integer; it seems most (all?) CPU instruction sets support longer rotations by simply discarding upper bits. Different from bit shifts, this behavior is reasonable because rotating a 32-bit quantity by 33 bits is indistinguishable from rotating it by 1 bit.
The counting operations return "int" quantities, consistent with the rule "use an int unless you need something else". This choice does not reflect, in the type, the fact that counts are always non-negative.
This proposal uses readable English names for the operations, except that "left" (towards/affecting the most significant bits) and "right" (towards/affecting the least significant bits) is abbreviate "l" and "r", respectively. The use of "left" and "right" in the operation names is consistent with the "left" and "right" built-in shift operators.
An earlier draft of this paper had names such as "countl1", but lower-case "ell" and the digit "one" are nearly indistinguishable in some fonts, so now a name like "countl_one" is proposed. This is slightly baroque, so alternatively "countl(T, bool)" could be used, with the understanding that the second parameter is often a compile-time constant, allowing for optimization opportunities.
Per prevailing LWG convention, only those functions are marked
noexcept that have a wide constract, i.e. no restrictions
on the values of the function arguments.
All functions are marked constexpr, assuming that
either compiler intrinsics that work in constant evaluation are
available to the implementation, or the optimizer is good enough to
use the appropriate hardware instructions for operations described
with potentially verbose expressions with built-in operators.
A tangentially related std::bit_cast is proposed
in P0476R1: "Bit-casting object representations" by JF
Bastien.
| operation | Intel/AMD | ARM | PowerPC |
|---|---|---|---|
| rotl | ROL | - | rldicl |
| rotr | ROR | ROR, EXTR | - |
| popcount | POPCNT | - | popcntb |
| countl_zero | BSR, LZCNT | CLZ | cntlzd |
| countl_one | - | CLS | - |
| countr_zero | BSF, TZCNT | - | - |
| countr_one | - | - | - |
<bit_ops> to the table in 17.5.1.2 [headers].
Append a new subsection to clause 20 [utilities] with the following content:
20.20 Bit operations [bitops]
20.20.1 Header <bit_ops> synopsis [bit_ops.syn]
namespace std { inline namespace bit_ops { // 20.20.2, rotating template<class T> constexpr T rotl(T x, unsigned int s) noexcept; template<class T> constexpr T rotr(T x, unsigned int s) noexcept; // 20.20.3, counting template<class T> constexpr int countl_zero(T x) noexcept; template<class T> constexpr int countl_one(T x) noexcept; template<class T> constexpr int countr_zero(T x) noexcept; template<class T> constexpr int countr_one(T x) noexcept; template<class T> constexpr int popcount(T x) noexcept; } }In the following descriptions, let N denotestd::numeric_limits<T>::digits.20.10.2 Rotating [bitops.rot]
template<class T> constexpr T rotl(T x, unsigned int s) noexcept;Returns:s % N == 0 ? x : (x << (s % N)) | (x >> (N - (s % N)));Remarks: Participates in overload resolution only if T is an unsigned integer type (3.9.1 [basic.fundamental]).
template<class T> constexpr T rotr(T x, unsigned int s) noexcept;Returns:s % N == 0 ? x : (x >> (s % N)) | (x << (N - (s % N)));Remarks: Participates in overload resolution only if T is an unsigned integer type (3.9.1 [basic.fundamental]).
20.10.3 Counting [bitops.count]
template<class T> constexpr int countl_zero(T x) noexcept;Returns: The number of consecutive 0 bits, starting from the most significant bit. [ Note: Returns N ifx == 0. ]Remarks: Participates in overload resolution only if T is an unsigned integer type (3.9.1 [basic.fundamental]).
template<class T> constexpr int countl_one(T x) noexcept;Returns: The number of consecutive 1 bits, starting from the most significant bit. [ Note: Returns N ifx == std::numeric_limits<T>::max(). ]Remarks: Participates in overload resolution only if T is an unsigned integer type (3.9.1 [basic.fundamental]).
template<class T> constexpr int countr_zero(T x) noexcept;Returns: The number of consecutive 0 bits, starting from the least significant bit. [ Note: Returns N if x == 0. ]Remarks: Participates in overload resolution only if T is an unsigned integer type (3.9.1 [basic.fundamental]).
template<class T> constexpr int countr_one(T x) noexcept;Returns: The number of consecutive 1 bits, starting from the least significant bit. [ Note: Returns N ifx == std::numeric_limits<T>::max(). ]Remarks: Participates in overload resolution only if T is an unsigned integer type (3.9.1 [basic.fundamental]).
template<class T> constexpr int popcount(T x) noexcept;Returns: The number of bits set to one in the value of x.Remarks: Participates in overload resolution only if T is an unsigned integer type (3.9.1 [basic.fundamental]).