How to perform a bitwise operation on floating point numbers

user_161628 0
Viewed 88957

I tried this:

float a = 1.4123;
a = a & (1 << 3);

I get a compiler error saying that the operand of & cannot be of type float.

When I do:

float a = 1.4123;
a = (int)a & (1 << 3);

I get the program running. The only thing is that the bitwise operation is done on the integer representation of the number obtained after rounding off.

The following is also not allowed.

float a = 1.4123;
a = (void*)a & (1 << 3);

I don't understand why int can be cast to void* but not float.

I am doing this to solve the problem described in Stack Overflow question How to solve linear equations using a genetic algorithm?.

genetic-algorithm bitwise-operators floating-point c++
9 Answers

You can work around the strict-aliasing rule and perform bitwise operations on a float type-punned as an uint32_t (if your implementation defines it, which most do) without undefined behavior by using memcpy():

float a = 1.4123f;
uint32_t b;

std::memcpy(&b, &a, 4);
// perform bitwise operation
b &= 1u << 3;
std::memcpy(&a, &b, 4);
user_15415630
Related