Get bit flags without looping through all possible values?

[Josh]

Let's say I have an unsigned integer I am storing bitwise flags in. I can store up to 32 possible flags.

Without looping through 64 values, is there a mathematical way I can retrieve which flags are set from the total number?:

bool flag[64] = { false };
for (int i=0; i<64; ++i)
{
  if ((i^2) & flags) flag[i] = true;
}

I expect the number of flags to be set to be fairly small, like 1-3, thus I want to avoid the loop.

[tjheldna]

Not sure if this is what your asking? Sorry if not

 

.h
enum
{
	kFlag1 1 << 0,
	kFlag2 1 << 1,
	kFlag3 1 << 2
};

class Foo
{
private:
	long 	flags;
public:

	Foo();
}


.cpp
Foo::Foo()
{
	//set some flags
	flags |= kFlag1 | kFlag2;

	//remove flag
	flags &= ~kFlag1;
}

Foo::Test(long flag)
{
	//check flag is set in variable
	if(flag & kFlag1)
	{
	}

	//check flag is not set in variable
	if(!(flag & kFlag1))
    {
    }
}

 

[Josh]

No, the problem is this code goes in a pixel shader and I don't want to go through in a loop and test each possible value when only a few of them will be true.

This might be right:

int flags = 1||4|16|256|4096|16384;
bool setflags[32] = {false};
while (flags > 0)
{
	int log2 = Log2(flags);
	setflags[ log2 ] = true;
	flags -= Pow2(log2);
}