C/C++ - Convert 24-bit signed integer to float

Question

I\'m programming in C++. I need to convert a 24-bit signed integer (stored in a 3-byte array) to float (normalizing to [-1.0,1.0]).

The platform is MSVC++ on x86 (wh

Answer 1

I'm not sure if it's good programming practice, but this seems to work (at least with g++ on 32-bit Linux, haven't tried it on anything else yet) and is certainly more elegant than extracting byte-by-byte from a char array, especially if it's not really a char array but rather a stream (in my case, it's a file stream) that you read from (if it is a char array, you can use memcpy instead of istream::read).

Just load the 24-bit variable into the less significant 3 bytes of a signed 32-bit (signed long). Then shift the long variable one byte to the left, so that the sign bit appears where it's meant to. Finally, just normalize the 32-bit variable, and you're all set.

union _24bit_LE{
  char access;
  signed long _long;
}_24bit_LE_buf;

float getnormalized24bitsample(){
  std::ifstream::read(&_24bit_LE_buf.access+1, 3);
  return (_24bit_LE_buf._long<<8) / (0x7fffffff + .5);
}

(Strangely, it doesn't seem to work when you just read into the 3 more significant bytes right away).

EDIT: it turns out this method seems to have some problems I don't fully understand yet. Better don't use it for the time being.