The Binary Book

By Steven Roman

The Binary Book is an electronic book that is roughly equivalent in size to a 100-page printed book. I am distributing it as a compiled HTML (CHM) help file, complete with a table of contents (see below), index and full-text search capability.

The Binary Book sells for $12.95. To purchase by credit card through PayPal, click the PayPal image below. I will email the book to you (the file is about 600KB) as soon as I am able, which is generally within 24 hours of purchase.

Introduction to the Book

Being a good programmer requires both skill and knowledge. Certainly, a programmer needs to have a solid understanding of his (or her) preferred programming languages, as well as the subject matter of the applications under development. But this is not enough. There is more to being an effective programmer.

This book delves into three areas of importance to programmers, areas that are all too often neglected.

• A look at binary, octal and hexadecimal number formats and their use by the computer. This includes converting between binary, octal, decimal and hexadecimal bases.
• A look at how to manipulate the individual bits in a binary string, that is, a bit flag.
• A look at data types, with examples drawn from both Visual Basic and Visual C++. This includes a look at signed and unsigned numerical data types, floating data types, strings, pointers and structures.
• A look at the basic principles of elementary logic. In particular, a look at the meaning of the various logical operators (AND, OR, NOT, XOR and so on).

Sample Chapter

Download a sample chapter.

Table of Contents

The Binary Book
     About the Author
Introduction

Part I - Bit Manipulation
Chapter 1 - Binary Strings
     Binary Strings
     Why Binary
     Lots of Bytes
          A Byte of Confusion
     Interpreting Binary Strings
          Binary Strings As Characters-Character Codes
               ASCII
               ANSI
               DBCS
               Unicode
               Unicode Support Under Windows
          Binary Strings as Instructions
          Binary Strings as Memory Addresses
     A Quick Peek at Memory
          Big Endian and Little Endian
Chapter 2 - Binary and Hexadecimal Number Formats
     Decimal Format
     Binary Format
          Some Useful Functions
               Visual Basic
               Visual C++
          What's Wrong with the Binary Format
     Octal Format
          Converting Between Octal and Binary
     Hexadecimal Format
          Converting Between Hexadecimal and Binary
Chapter 3 - Bitwise Manipulations
     Flags
          A Visual Basic Example
          A Visual C++ Example
     Bitwise Operators
          The Basic Bitwise Operators
          Two More Bitwise Operators
     Bitwise Manipulations
          Examples
               Example 1 - Clearing Bits in a Flag
               Example 2 - Setting Bits in a Flag
               Example 3 - Reversing Bits in a Flag
               Example 4 - Retrieving the Value of a Bit in a Flag
          Summary
          Using Symbolic Constants with Bit Flags
               A Visual Basic Example
               A Visual C++ Example

Part II - Data Types
Chapter 4 - Preliminaries
     Variables
          Name
          Address
          Type
          Value
          Variable Scope
          Variable Lifetime
               Static Variables
     Pointers
          By Indirections Find Directions Out
          Pointers in Visual Basic
     CopyMemory - A VB Hackers Dream
          A Simple Example
          A More Interesting Example
Chapter 5 - Data Types
     What is a Data Type
     An Example-Integer Data Types
          The VC++ Unsigned Integer Data Type
          The VC++ Integer Data Type
          The Visual Basic Integer Data Type
     Groups of Data Types
     Fundamental and Derived Data Types
Chapter 6 - Visual Basic Data Types
     Variants
     User-Defined Types
Chapter 7 - Basic VC++ Data Types
     TypeDefs
     Char Data Types
          Unicode Character Types
     Int Data Types
     Floating Point Data Types
     Other Data Types
          Void
          FARPROC
          HANDLE
          Boolean Data Types
     Summary
Chapter 8 - Signed and Unsigned Integer Data Types
     Signed and Unsigned Representations
     Why Two Different Representations
     Unsigned Representation
     Signed Representation
          The Signed-Magnitude Representation
          The Two's Complement Representation
               Why Is It Called Two's Complement
     Translating Between Signed and Unsigned Representations
          Integers
          Longs
          Bytes
          Examples
     Converting Between Word Lengths
Chapter 9 - Floating Point Data Types
     Binary Expansions
     IEEE Floating Point Numbers
          Displaying Binary Expansions
Chapter 10 - Strings
     The BSTR
     VC++ Strings
     VarPtr and StrPtr

Part III - Logic
Chapter 11 - Statements and Connectives
     Statements and Connectives
          Simple and Compound Statements
          Logical Statements and Programming Statements
     Truth Values
     Symbolic Form
     The Connectives
          Negation
          Conjunction
          Disjunction
          Exclusive Or
          Nand and Nor
          The Conditional
          The Biconditional
Chapter 12 - Truth Tables
     Tautologies and Contradictions
Chapter 13 - Logical Equivalence
     DeMorgan's Laws
     The Converse of a Statement

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