Given space is often at a premium when writing applications for mobile devices, I want to show you how to use bitfields to manage a series of values that need only on/off status. The upside is that you can store a surprising number of status values within a single integer, 32 to be exact.

The code that follows is pure C. Given that Objective-C is a superset of C, don’t forget that you can leverage all that C has to offer, beyond working with objects.

1
2
3
4
5
6

struct
{
  unsigned preLoaded: 1;
  unsigned saveState: 1;
  unsigned saveLoginName: 1;
} statusFlags;

I’ve defines three bitfields, all which will be saved within an unsigned integer. Accessing the bits is as easy as this:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7

// Setting bits
statusFlags.preLoaded = 1;
statusFlags.saveState = statusFlags.saveLoginName = 0;
 
// Get bits
if (statusFlags.saveLoginName == 0)
  ... do something here...

Using the sizeof() function, let’s compare the size of an integer to the size of the structure we created:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12

// Setting bits
statusFlags.preLoaded = 1;
statusFlags.saveState = statusFlags.saveLoginName = 0;
 
// Get bits
if (statusFlags.saveLoginName == 0)
  NSLog(@"saveLoginName bit is on.");
else
  NSLog(@"saveLoginName bit is off.");  
 
NSLog(@"Sizeof int: %d", sizeof(int)); 
NSLog(@"Sizeof statusFlags: %d", sizeof(statusFlags));

The output looks as follows, which verifies that the bitfields are maintained within a single unsigned integer.

What’s interesting is that we now know that an integer is 4 bytes, this would imply that we can store up to 32 separate flags within our structure. To verify this the case, let’s create a new structure that looks as follows:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

struct
{
  unsigned preLoaded: 1;
  unsigned saveState: 1;
  unsigned saveLoginName: 1;
  unsigned buffer: 28;
  unsigned savePassword: 1;
} statusFlagsExtended;

In this structure, ‘buffer’ is nothing more than a means for me to soak up 28 bits such that I can add one more bit on the end. Let’s take a look at the sizeof this structure with the code below:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13

// Setting bits
statusFlags.preLoaded = 1;
statusFlags.saveState = statusFlags.saveLoginName = 0;
 
// Get bits
if (statusFlags.saveLoginName == 0)
  NSLog(@"saveLoginName bit is on.");
else
  NSLog(@"saveLoginName bit is off.");  
 
NSLog(@"Sizeof int: %d", sizeof(int)); 
NSLog(@"Sizeof statusFlags: %d", sizeof(statusFlags));
NSLog(@"Sizeof statusFlagsExtended: %d", sizeof(statusFlagsExtended));

As expected, the structure ‘statusFlagsExtended’ is also stored as an integer.

Even thought the bulk of developing iPhone application is all about Objective-C, don’t forget to lean on C as needed to get the job done.