PureBasic Forums - English

I am attempting to set up a list whose elements are in the format of a Structure, but the Structure elements are simply a sequence of bits (for ultrafast bitflag checking), and there are 32 bits. So in other words, the list is composed of a series of 32-bit elements, meaning they are ultimately just a list of 4-byte sequences, to be parsed by code for their set bits.

I'd like to set up a Structure so i can use the code to quickly find the value of the bit im looking at and reduce the parsing code. Can i use EnumerationBinary within a Structure to define each bit, or does that have to be outside of the Structure and used by the bit-parsing code. I know i can just set up a single-byte element within the structure for each bit, but i expect there to be tens of thousands of elements in the list, and i'd like to reduce the amount of memory each boolean will occupy. In other words, i dont want to use 1 whole byte for a 1-bit piece of data — i'd rather use a parser on a compression of bits.

If i cant use binary enumerations inside a structure, what is the best way to set up a series of 32 bitflags in each line of a list?

I hope all this makes sense, but if you need more explanation, i can provide a clearer intention. I have not begun doing the code, but i am setting up my data structures, unsure of what i can and cant do with Structure design

No structure is needed for this.

PureBasic doesn't have a bit sized type, so you can't build a structure the way you describe. But, as User_Russian already says, you don't need one to do this. If you want up to 32 flags, a long will be sufficient and the EnumerationBinary can describe your flags correctly.

There is a 'gotcha' that you should be aware of though, if you aren't already. In a long the 32nd bit represents the sign so a greater than zero general test like this won't work when this bit is set: You can however do this instead:

Change name of bits ...

Ok thanks for all your advice.

The reason i wanted to use a structure as my list element is so i can quickly access a bit by variable name. But as i already knew, there arent one-bit variable sizes, the smallest is one byte.
So think i'll incorporate @mk-soft's code and just store the list element as 4 bytes worth of bits for each element. It's compact and parsing the bitflags will be relatively fast rather than saving booleans as variables.