CS-225, Fall 2022 Data Lab: Manipulating Bits

Assigned: Sept. 22, Due: Thursday, Oct. 6, 2022, 11:55PM

Ajwa Shahid ([email protected]), Muhammad Sumeer Ahmad ([email protected]), Muham-

mad Umair Mohsin ([email protected]) are the lead persons for this assignment.

1 Introduction

The purpose of this assignment is to become more familiar with bit-level representations of integers and
floating point numbers. You’ll do this by solving a series of programming “puzzles.” Many of these puzzles
are quite artificial, but you’ll find yourself thinking much more about bits in working your way through
them.

2 Logistics

This is an individual project. All handins are electronic. Clarifications and corrections will be posted on the
course Web page.

3 Handout Instructions
The only file you will be needing for this assignment is datalab-handout.tar file. It
is uploaded on LMS under the assignments tab.

Start by copying datalab-handout.tar to a (protected) directory on a Linux machine in which you

plan to do your work. Then give the command

unix> tar xvf datalab-handout.tar.

This will cause a number of files to be unpacked in the directory. The only file you will be modifying and
turning in is bits.c.
The bits.c file contains a skeleton for each of the 12 programming puzzles. Your assignment is to
complete each function skeleton using only straightline code for the integer puzzles (i.e., no loops or con-
ditionals) and a limited number of C arithmetic and logical operators. Specifically, you are only allowed to
use the following eight operators:

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 ! ˜ & ˆ | + << >>

A few of the functions further restrict this list. Also, you are not allowed to use any constants longer than 8
bits. See the comments in bits.c for detailed rules and a discussion of the desired coding style.

4 The Puzzles

This section describes the puzzles that you will be solving in bits.c.

4.1 Bit Manipulations

Table 1 describes a set of functions that manipulate and test sets of bits. The “Rating” field gives the
difficulty rating (the number of points) for the puzzle, and the “Max ops” field gives the maximum number
of operators you are allowed to use to implement each function. See the comments in bits.c for more
details on the desired behavior of the functions. You may also refer to the test functions in tests.c. These
are used as reference functions to express the correct behavior of your functions, although they don’t satisfy
the coding rules for your functions.

Name Description Rating Max Ops

bitNor(x,y) ˜(x | y) using only & and ˜ 1 8
bitXor(x,y) x ˆ y using only & and ˜ 1 14
byteSwap(x,n,m) swaps the nth and the mth byte. For example, 2 25
byteSwap(0xDEADBEEF, 0, 2) = 0xDEEF-
BEAD
allEvenBits(x) returns 1 if all even-numbered bits in x set to 2 12
1; otherwise return 0.
anyOddBit(x) returns 1 if any odd-numbered bit in x set to 2 12
1; otherwise return 0.
logicalShift(x,n) Shift right logical. 3 20

Table 1: Bit-Level Manipulation Functions.

4.2 Two’s Complement Arithmetic

Table 2 describes a set of functions that make use of the two’s complement representation of integers. Again,
refer to the comments in bits.c and the reference versions in tests.c for more information.

5 Evaluation

Your score will be computed out of a maximum of 50 points based on the following distribution:

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 Name Description Rating Max Ops
tmax() returns maximum two’s complement integer 1 4
isNegative(x) returns 1 if x < 0, returns 0 otherwise 2 6
isNotEqual(x,y) returns 1 if x ! = y, returns 0 otherwise 2 6
isGreater(x,y) returns 1 if x > y, returns 0 otherwise 3 24
satMul2(x) multiplies by 2, saturating to Tmin or Tmax if 3 20
overflow.
isPower2(x) returns 1 if x is a power of 2 and returns 0 4 20
otherwise.

Table 2: Arithmetic Functions

26 Correctness points.

24 Performance points.

Correctness points. The 12 puzzles you must solve have been given a difficulty rating between 1 and 4, such
that their weighted sum totals to 26. We will evaluate your functions using the btest program, which is
described in the next section. You will get full credit for a puzzle if it passes all of the tests performed by
btest, and no credit otherwise.
Performance points. Our main concern at this point in the course is that you can get the right answer.
However, we want to instill in you a sense of keeping things as short and simple as you can. Furthermore,
some of the puzzles can be solved by brute force, but we want you to be more clever. Thus, for each function
we’ve established a maximum number of operators that you are allowed to use for each function. This limit
is very generous and is designed only to catch egregiously inefficient solutions. You will receive two points
for each correct function that satisfies the operator limit.

Autograding your work

We have included some autograding tools in the handout directory — btest, dlc, and driver.pl —
to help you check the correctness of your work.

• btest: This program checks the functional correctness of the functions in bits.c. To build and
use it, type the following two commands:

unix> make
unix> ./btest

Notice that you must rebuild btest each time you modify your bits.c file.
You’ll find it helpful to work through the functions one at a time, testing each one as you go. You can
use the -f flag to instruct btest to test only a single function:

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 unix> ./btest -f bitAnd

You can feed it specific function arguments using the option flags -1, -2, and -3:

unix> ./btest -f bitAnd -1 7 -2 0xf

Check the file README for documentation on running the btest program.

• dlc: This is a modified version of an ANSI C compiler from the MIT CILK group that you can use
to check for compliance with the coding rules for each puzzle. The typical usage is:

unix> ./dlc bits.c

The program runs silently unless it detects a problem, such as an illegal operator, too many operators,
or non-straightline code in the integer puzzles. Running with the -e switch:

unix> ./dlc -e bits.c

causes dlc to print counts of the number of operators used by each function. Type ./dlc -help
for a list of command line options.

• driver.pl: This is a driver program that uses btest and dlc to compute the correctness and
performance points for your solution. It takes no arguments:

unix> ./driver.pl

Your instructors will use driver.pl to evaluate your solution.

6 Handin Instructions

Upload your assignments before the deadline on the lms tab. The only file you need to
submit is bits.c.
IMPORTANT:
The naming convention you must follow is s<roll-no>-bits.c for the file name. e.g., if your
roll number is 21100180, the “bits.c” file you will be submitting should be renamed to
“s21100180-bits.c” before submission. The submissions which don’t follow the naming
conventions won’t be considered for grading.

7 Advice

• Don’t include the <stdio.h> header file in your bits.c file, as it confuses dlc and results in
some non-intuitive error messages. You will still be able to use printf in your bits.c file for
debugging without including the <stdio.h> header, although gcc will print a warning that you
can ignore.

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• The dlc program enforces a stricter form of C declarations than is the case for C++ or that is enforced
by gcc. In particular, any declaration must appear in a block (what you enclose in curly braces) before
any statement that is not a declaration. For example, it will complain about the following code:

int foo(int x)
{
int a = x;
a *= 3; /* Statement that is not a declaration */
int b = a; /* ERROR: Declaration not allowed here */
}