I need to parse a network packet which consists of two bytes: first one consists of 8 bits that set certain flags depending on their order (for instance) and the second one is uint8 (which is simple)
How do I parse it from a byte primitive?
Some useful Go standard library packages for dealing with binary:
For extracting single bits from a byte, you ought to use bitwise operators - |
, &
and >>
.
package main
import (
"fmt"
)
func main() {
v := byte(0xB2)
if (v >> 4) & 1 == 1 {
fmt.Println("bit 4 (counting from 0) is set")
}
}
This checks bit 4 (with bit 0 being the lowest bit in the byte) by shifting the byte value 4 positions to the right and AND
-ing with 1. You can check the other bits in your flag value similarly. Feel free to write a function that replaces the 4 in the sample above with an argument N
to check bit number N
.
You can find more examples in other SO answers like this one or the ones @icza linked to in a comment.