Define const or custom type of 4bits

[Sander van Harmelen]

It seems that the smallest type I can define is a byte/int8 which is 8bits. Is there a way to define a const or custom type of 4bits?

Sander

[Jesse McNelis]

On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 9:09 AM, Sander van Harmelen <san...@xanzy.io> wrote:
> It seems that the smallest type I can define is a byte/int8 which is 8bits.
> Is there a way to define a const or custom type of 4bits?

No there isn't since you can't actually address 4 bits.
You can use bit shifting/bit masking to store two 4bit values in a byte.
Eg. http://golang.org/pkg/os/#FileMode stores various values in a single uint32

[Kevin Malachowski]

Do you have a specific use case? Is it just that you only need [0, 15] and want to save space?

[Kevin Malachowski]

PS: http://play.golang.org/p/78zL6hjqQy

It's simple but it if you just need set/get at certain indexes this will probably work for you. Append and other normal slicing operations would be tedious, but not difficult, to add.

[Sander van Harmelen]

Well… I was just looking into generic algorithms and was wondering if I could use actual bits instead of a bit string for encoding and decoding a problem….

Sander

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[Sander van Harmelen]

Thanks, I guess I could use an approach like this. Not sure if it will be a better solution for my use case. Thx!

Sander

[Sander van Harmelen]

Thanks for the suggestion, will have a closer look at that. I guess that in my use case it’s maybe a better solution to create a custom encoding instead. Will need to do some more research I guess :)

Sander