[Ronald91]

I have no experience with python, but I use bit-wise operators extensively in C. I typical program the firmware for micro-controllers and one peripheral where I use bit-wise operators is the LCD screen. The LCD on the I-O board that I typically use has four data pins for inputs and four for outputs and LCD's display ASCII characters which is eight bits. So here is a function that uses bit-wise operators to configure the LCD to accept an ASCII character and display it correctly.

void putcLCD(char cx)
{
     char temp;
     temp = cx;
     LCD_DAT |= LCD_RS;    /* select LCD data register */
     LCD_DAT |= LCD_E;     /* pull E signal to high */
     cx &= 0xF0;           /* clear the lower 4 bits */
     cx >>= 2;             /* shift to match the LCD data pins */
     LCD_DAT = cx|LCD_E_RS;/* output upper 4 bits, E, and RS */
     asm("nop");
     asm("nop");
     asm("nop");
     LCD_DAT &= (~LCD_E);  /* pull E to low */
     cx = temp & 0x0F;     /* get the lower 4 bits */
     LCD_DAT |= LCD_E;     /* pull E to high */
     cx <<= 2;             /* shift to match the LCD data pins */
     LCD_DAT = cx|LCD_E_RS;/* output lower 4 bits, E, and RS */
     asm("nop");
     asm("nop");
     asm("nop");
     LCD_DAT &= (~LCD_E);  /* pull E to low */
     delayby50us(1);
}

[Motoma]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned networking yet. Take for instance, a client and server negotiating connection options. The following example sends 4 flags in one byte, where your basic struct.pack would use 4 bytes. I believe just send()ing a bool results in 1 byte each as well.

Client side:

version = 341

option1 = True
option2 = False
option3 = True
option4 = True

#...

sock.connect((server, port))
negotiation = struct.pack('!LB', version, option1 | option2<<1 | option3<<2 | option4<<3)
sock.send(negotiation)

Server side:

#...

client, addr = sock.accept()
version, options = struct.unpack('!LB', client.recv(5))
option1 = bool(options & 1)
option2 = bool(options & 1<<1)
option3 = bool(options & 1<<2)
option4 = bool(options & 1<<3)

This post has been edited by Motoma: 15 December 2010 - 08:13 AM

[atraub]

These examples are really cool, albeit complex haha.