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<<|>>Bit packing

Hi,


I am trying to pack 4 6 bits data into 3 bytes. How do I check whether the packing that I have done is correct? I don't want to write the codes for unpacking the data before checking that the codes for packing is correct. Following is my code segment :

int packbit (unsigned char *a, int n, unsigned char *b)
{
  int i;
  int loop=n/4;
 
for(i=0; i<loop;a+=4,b+=3)
   {
      b[0]=a[0]+(unsigned char)(a[1]<<6);
      b[1]=(a[1]>>2)+(unsigned char)(a[2]<<4);
      b[2]=(a[2]>>4)+(unsigned char)(a[3]<<2);
   }
}

Pls help with some code examples. Thanks.

Rgds,
PY
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peiyoke

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What I am trying to do is to compress data in a file and packing algorithm to be used is not restricted. After running the codes for packing, can I determine from output directly whether the codes is correct? I tried to examine the bit pattern of the output but don't see any correlation between the input and the output data.

Even though I store my data as unsigned char, I came across a book which states that integral promotions are performed when shift expressions are evaluated. Does this means that even though my data are packed from 4 bytes to 3 bytes for the array elements, but the overall storage required to store the data has been increased by 4?

Can I or should I do some casting such as
(unsigned char)(a[0]>>2)?


Pls advise. Thanks.