Re: wtf is happening here @ bitwise comparison

From:
Paavo Helde <myfirstname@osa.pri.ee>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Thu, 23 Dec 2010 03:03:08 -0600
Message-ID:
<Xns9E57706E9F9A4myfirstnameosapriee@216.196.109.131>
tschmittldk <tschmittldk@googlemail.com> wrote in news:9139bceb-5be4-
4653-8b82-d92663dd18d8@l32g2000yqc.googlegroups.com:

On 22 Dez., 19:45, tschmittldk <tschmitt...@googlemail.com> wrote:

Okay thanks for all your answers. I try it tomorrow and post the code
then (I left my notebook in my student flat...). But it seems more
clearly to me now, thanks!


Okay, now here's the code:

void codevert(char *ArrayToTransform)
{
     int j = 0;
     char *ptr = ArrayToTransform;
     while (*ptr != '\0') {
          if((*ptr & 0xC0) > 0xbf)
          {
               if(*ptr == '\xc3')
                    simplifier_correct(3, ptr++);
               else if(*ptr == '\xc4')
                    simplifier_correct(3, ptr++);
               else if(*ptr == '\xc4')
                    simplifier_correct(3, ptr++);
               else
                    std::cout << "E01";
          }
          ptr++;
     }
}


This is all very brittle. *ptr is char, which is most probably a signed
type and can be negative. (*ptr & 0xC0) is int and appears to be positive
and of the desired value even if *ptr is negative, this is more by chance
and not very portable. 0xbf is int and positive, '\xc3' is char and
negative.

I would rewrite this code about like this:

     const unsigned char *ptr = reinterpret_cast<unsigned char*>
(ArrayToTransform);
     while (*ptr) {
          if((*ptr & 0xC0) > 0xbf)
          {
               if(*ptr == 0xc3)
               // ...

hth
Paavo

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