How do I extract bits from 32 bit number

Question

I have do not have much knowledge of C and im stuck with a problem since one of my colleague is on leave.

I have a 32 bit number and i have to extract bits from it.

Answer 1

I combined the top 2 answers above to write a C program that extracts the bits for any range of bits (not just 10 through 25) of a 32-bit unsigned int. The way the function works is that it returns bits lo to hi (inclusive) of num.

#include 
#include 

unsigned extract(unsigned num, unsigned hi, unsigned lo) {
    uint32_t range = (hi - lo + 1);  //number of bits to be extracted
    //shifting a number by the number of bits it has produces inconsistent 
    //results across machines so we need a special case for extract(num, 31, 0)
    if(range == 32)
        return num;
    uint32_t result = 0;
    //following the rule above, ((1 << x) - 1) << y) makes the mask:
    uint32_t mask = ((1 << range) -1) << lo;
    //AND num and mask to get only the bits in our range
    result = num & mask;
    result = result >> lo; //gets rid of trailing 0s
    return result;
}
int main() {
    unsigned int num = 0xd7448eab;
    printf("0x%x\n", extract(num, 10, 25));
}