Re: Offset and Bit Mask for Bit Fields?

[Manu Abraham <abraham dot manu at gmail dot com>]

Andrew Haley wrote:

> Dimitry Golubovsky writes:
> > 
> > If one wants to automatically determine offset of a regular field in a
> > C structure, one uses `offsetof'
> > 
> > According to the documentation, 
> > 
> > ==============
> > This macro (offsetof) won't work if member is a bit field; you get an
> > error from the C compiler in that case.
> > ==============
>
> Yes, because it's not addressable.
>
>  
I ask this question in this thread because i think it is very much 
similar ..

Suppose i have a struct like this ?

struct stream {
     uint8_t    stream_type: 8;
     uint16_t    reserved_1: 3;
     uint16_t    elementary_pid: 13;
     uint16_t    reserved_2: 4;
     uint16_t    es_info_length: 12;

     void    *descriptor;
};

struct pmt {
     uint8_t    table_id: 8;
     uint16_t    section_syntax : 1;
     uint16_t    reserved_1: 1;
     uint16_t    reserved_2: 2;
     uint16_t    section_length: 12;
     uint16_t    program_number: 16;
     uint8_t    reserved_3: 2;
     uint8_t    version_number: 5;
     uint8_t    current_next: 1;
     uint8_t    section_number: 8;
     uint8_t    last_section: 8;
     uint16_t    reserved_4: 3;
     uint16_t    pcr_pid: 13;
     uint16_t    reserved_5: 4;
     uint16_t    program_info_length: 12;

     void    *descriptor;

     struct stream    *streams;
};

The incoming bitsream is bigendian. My target platform is a desktop PC , 
little endian.

I was looking at how i can implement a parser based upon this structure, 
without having to do a

* get_bits() using shifts and a mask
* or a shift and a mask alone.

I initially had the idea of copying the bitstream straight away to the 
struct considering memory allocated is the same, trying to handle 
endianness in some manner in the copy procedure.

If somebody could comment on what would be the best way to about it, 
that would be quite helpful.


Thanks,
Manu