How to efficiently read bits out of bytes?

Question

I\'m working on a project that includes WebSockets, and data between the server (Node.js) and the client (Chrome) is sent using a custom (very simple) format for data exchan

Answer 1

The binary AND and bit shifting operations are the fastest way of doing this. They translate well into machine code instructions. The only way to further speed this up is by sacrificing bandwidth for speed by for example simply not using more than 3 bits per byte, but judging from your question you've probably already considered and rejected that tradeoff.