Bits and Bytes

Bits can't be accessed directly as a simple data type. Learn how to manipulate bits (nearly) as any simple data type.

If you are using the STL bitset class with large bitsets that spend most their time in the sparse or mostly populated range, this class may be what you are looking for.

For those who are new to sockets programming or who've long ago forgotten the idiosyncrasies of byte ordering with sockets (as I had when I needed to know this last year), here's a primer on what byte ordering is, why it's needed, and terms such as little-endian, big-endian, network byte order, and host bye order.

Read an array as a stream of bits. You can navigate inside the array of data, set a "pointer" to any bit inside the array, and choose the order the bits of every byte will be processed.