How to get position of right most set bit in C

Question

int a = 12;

for eg: binary of 12 is 1100 so answer should be 3 as 3rd bit from right is set.

I want the position of the last most set bit o

Answer 1

You must check all 32 bits starting at index 0 and working your way to the left. If you can bitwise-and your a with a one bit at that position and get a non-zero value back, it means the bit is set.

#include 

int last_set_pos(int a) {
  for (int i = 0; i < sizeof a * CHAR_BIT; ++i) {
    if (a & (0x1 << i)) return i;
  }
  return -1; // a == 0
}

On typical systems int will be 32 bits, but doing sizeof a * CHAR_BIT will get you the right number of bits in a even if it's a different size