binary constants (??)

[Jfriedl]

There's one (particular) hassle I've always had when programming
in C and I thought I'd ask about it.....

In some cases, I find it would be much more natural to represent
integral constants in binary, but I don't know of an easy way to
do this. For example, I find the mythical: (can you pretend these
are binary constants? Sure, I knew you could):
	#define FLAG_A		00000001000
	#define FLAG_B		00000010000
	#define FLAG_C		00000100000
	#define FLAG_D		00001000000
	#define FLAG_E		00010000000
	#define FLAG_F		00100000000
	#define FLAG_MASK	00111111000
rather more immediately obvious than
	#define FLAG_A		0x0008
	#define FLAG_B		0x0010
	#define FLAG_C		0x0020
	#define FLAG_D		0x0040
	#define FLAG_E		0x0080
	#define FLAG_F		0x0100
	#define FLAG_MASK	0x01F8
This example may be contrived, but the idea is there. Not only
does it indicate the desired value, but also that this data is
inherently binary and, if applicable to the situation, the
"width" of the data.

So, I have this retched macro that seems to work for short
binary constants:
    #define B(N)                             (	\
        ((1==(((2 ## N)         )%10))   ) |	\
        ((1==(((2 ## N)/10      )%10))<<1) |	\
        ((1==(((2 ## N)/100     )%10))<<2) |	\
        ((1==(((2 ## N)/1000    )%10))<<3) |	\
        ((1==(((2 ## N)/10000   )%10))<<4) |	\
        ((1==(((2 ## N)/100000  )%10))<<5) |	\
        ((1==(((2 ## N)/1000000 )%10))<<6) |	\
        ((1==(((2 ## N)/10000000)%10))<<7)   )
(non-ANSI compilers might try "/**/" rather than " ## ").

This has worked well for an 88K disassembler that I wrote,
where I dealt a lot in instruction opcode fields, etc.
For example, the following is pulled verbatim from it:
			.
			.
			.
	IMM16   = extract(16, bits of, inst, starting at bit,  0),
	S1	= extract( 5, bits of, inst, starting at bit, 16),
	D	= extract( 5, bits of, inst, starting at bit, 21),
	which	= extract( 6, bits of, inst, starting at bit, 26);

	/* first, just get the name of this instruction */
	switch((int)which)
	{
	    default:
		return(-1);

	    case B(000000):  name = "xmem.bu";	break;
	    case B(000001):  name = "xmem";	break;
	    case B(000010):  name = "ld.hu";	break;
			.
			.
			.
To anyone familiar with the mc88100, and looking at the
appropriate spot in the manual (as indicated nearby in
the program), this is *wonderfully* clear.

ANYWAY, finally to my questions:
    Is there a way better than the above macro to do this?
    I've gcc v1.36 -- does it have any special stuff for this?
    Any comments (other than "Ack!Gag!Barf!") about the above macro?

I'll summarize if there seems to be enough interest...

	*jeff*
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeffrey Eric Francis Friedl                    jfriedl at nff.ncl.omron.co.junet
Omron Tateisi Electronics, Dept. OE                         Nagaokakyo, Japan
Fax: 011-81-75-955-2442                        Phone: 011-81-75-951-5111 x154
direct path from UUNET:                             ...!uunet!othello!jfriedl