Overview
Every value a computer manipulates — an integer, a character, a color, an instruction — is ultimately
Basics
Computers store everything as fixed-width sequences of bits (0/1). Binary is how the
Integers & Two's Complement
A fixed-width integer has a fixed number of bits, so it can only represent a finite range of
Floating Point
Floating point is a way to represent a huge range of real numbers — from 1e-300 to 1e300 — in
Character Encoding
Text is stored as bits too — a character encoding is the mapping between abstract characters
Techniques
Bit-manipulation techniques are small, well-known patterns for testing, setting, and transforming