Bitstrings in

About Bitstrings

Bitstrings allow programmers to work with binary data effectively.

• You can construct bitstrings elegantly using the <<>> special form.

  <<0b101::3>> == <<5::3>> and <<5::3>> == <<5::size(3)>>
  # => true
  
  first = <<0b110::3>>
  second = <<0b001::3>>
  combined = <<first::bitstring, second::bitstring>>
  # => <<49::size(6)>>
  

• You can match using the <<>> form and use that match to further decompose binary data.

  <<data_size::32, count::size(data_size)>> = <<8::32, 3::8>>
  # => <<0, 0, 0, 8, 3>>
  data_size
  # => 8
  count
  # => 3
  

• You can match on the remainder of the bitstring using ::bitstring.

  <<_::32, remainder::bitstring>> = <<8::32, 3::8>>
  # => <<0, 0, 0, 8, 3>>
  remainder
  # => <<3>>
  

• The binary data type is a specific type of bitstring where the number of bits is divisible by 8.

  • All binaries are bitstrings, but not all bitstrings are binaries.

• Elixir provides syntactic sugar for working with integer literals in different forms:

  • 0b1000001 = ?A = 65