bit operations -- are they possible?

[Bernt Nilsson]

Hello all,

I have an older FORTRAN program for demultiplexing sampled data files. 
In these multiplexed files, consisting of 16 bit words, each word 
contains a 12 bit value and a 4 bit channel number.

The problem with the FORTRAN program is that it cannot handle files 
larger than 32 MB. therefore I would like to let Octave handle the 
demultiplexing instead.

Is it possible to use Octave for "sifting" out the value and the 
channel number respectively, or do I have to use C/FORTRAN for this? 
That is, is it possible to rewrite my old program as an Octave m-file?

Since I wrote this message I have found out that I could use the 
string routines bin2dec and dec2bin. The question is then, would an 
m-file using these routines be painfully slow? Is there anyone with 
experience in doing these operations?

Thanks for any input on this!

Bernt






Bernt Nilsson                               email : address@hidden
National Defence Research Establishment       tel :    +46 8 706 3611
S-172 90 Stockholm, Sweden                    fax :    +46 8 706 3543