0xUNDERSTAND

September 27, 2008 11:42 AM

Are there any scripting / cli-compatible languages which decently provide or at least pretend to provide bit-math?

So, I'm in one of my last CS courses in college, and it involves a whole lot of bit-mangling. Writing, testing C code is all right, but I kind of want to tinker in my free time to get a deeper understanding, and I'd love some language that lets me use something like irb/python/hugs/etc to quickly test bit expressions (your usual ^, |, &, !, etc)

Is there anything? I kind of remember a C++ CLI a while ago, but I can't figure out where it is.

Thanks!

posted by tmcw to computers & internet (7 answers total)

Bitwise operations in Perl.

Bitwise operations in Python.

Google "bit operation 'language'" and you'll find those operators for other scripting languages.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:50 AM on September 27, 2008

codepad.org lets you type your C and see the output instantly.
posted by MaxK at 12:16 PM on September 27, 2008

I thought it was possible to do that in the Bourne shell.
posted by Class Goat at 12:59 PM on September 27, 2008

Erlang has bitwise pattern matching.

Erlang, the language for network programming
Issue 2: binary pattern matching
by José Pablo Ezequiel Pupeno Fernández Silva
posted by gmarceau at 1:31 PM on September 27, 2008

Depending on your tolerance for non-algol syntax, forth is interactive, small, self hosting, and designed primarily for low level stuff like bit manipulations.

A quick google found CINT, which is a C interpreter CLI with "bash like command line features" (I am guessing that means they link to lreadline?) available under the MIT license.
posted by idiopath at 1:45 PM on September 27, 2008

class goat: looks like you are right, I was surprised! That is probably the easiest way to do a quick bitwise operation, because bash is standard on every major OS but windows, and you can get bash for windows easy enough.
posted by idiopath at 1:58 PM on September 27, 2008

epilog: I've been using Ruby, actually, for a lot of testing. You can use bytes with just 0x55, etc.

Still not doing well in the class.

Sigh, take me back to high-level object-oriented meta-programming.
posted by tmcw at 7:56 AM on October 20, 2008