C# in a Nutshell, Second Edition

Name

BitArray

Synopsis

This class stores a collection of bit values as Boolean types. The constructor takes many different forms of input to build the initial array, including arguments that specify the initial values and the size of the array. You can construct the BitArray with an existing array of bools, or with a byte or integer array. With an integer array, each int value becomes 32 bits of the BitArray, with the least significant bit mapped to the lowest index value (MyBitArray[0]) of the 32-bit range. A byte array uses 8 bits for each value in a similar fashion. A “bare” array can be constructed by simply providing an integer value for the number of bits in the BitArray, which are all set to false by default. Provide an additional Boolean value as a second argument to set the default values to either true or false.

The main functions of the BitArray class allow you to perform bitwise operations with two BitArrays of the same length. There are methods for And( ), Or( ), and Xor( ) that correspond to their respective bitwise operations. The Not( ) method inverts each bit value in the BitArray.

public sealed class BitArray : ICollection, IEnumerable, ICloneable {
// Public Constructors
   public BitArray(BitArray bits);
   public BitArray(bool[ ] values);
   public BitArray(byte[ ] bytes);
   public BitArray(int length);
   public BitArray(int[ ] values);
   public BitArray(int length, bool defaultValue);
// Public Instance Properties
   public int Count{get; }
// implements ICollection public bool ...