3/16/22, 8:51 PM Bit numbering - Wikipedia

Bit numbering
In computing, bit numbering is the convention used to identify the bit positions in a binary
number.

Bit significance and indexing

The binary representation of decimal 149, with

the LSB highlighted. The LSB represents a value
of 1.

The unsigned binary representation of decimal

149, with the MSB highlighted. The MSB
represents a value of 128.

In computing, the least significant bit (LSB) is the bit position in a binary integer representing
the binary 1s place of the integer. Similarly, the most significant bit (MSB) represents the
highest-order place of the binary integer. The LSB is sometimes referred to as the low-order bit
or right-most bit, due to the convention in positional notation of writing less significant digits
further to the right. The MSB is similarly referred to as the high-order bit or left-most bit. In both
cases, the LSB and MSB correlate directly to the least significant digit and most significant digit
of a decimal integer.

Bit indexing correlates to the positional notation of the value in base 2. For this reason, bit index
is not affected by how the value is stored on the device, such as the value's byte order. Rather, it
is a property of the numeric value in binary itself. This is often utilized in programming via bit
shifting: A value of 1 << n corresponds to the nth bit of a binary integer (with a value of 2n ).

Least significant bit in digital steganography

In digital steganography, sensitive messages may be

concealed by manipulating and storing information
in the least significant bits of an image or a sound
file. The user may later recover this information by
extracting the least significant bits of the
manipulated pixels to recover the original message. This allows the storage or transfer of digital
information to remain concealed.

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Unsigned integer example

This table illustrates an example of decimal value of 149 and the location of LSB. In this particular
example, the position of unit value (decimal 1 or 0) is located in bit position 0 (n = 0). MSB
stands for most significant bit, while LSB stands for least significant bit.

Binary (Decimal: 149) 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1

Bit weight for given bit position n ( 2n ) 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20

Bit position label MSB LSB

Most- vs least-significant bit first

The expressions most significant bit first and least significant bit at last are indications on the
ordering of the sequence of the bits in the bytes sent over a wire in a serial transmission protocol
or in a stream (e.g. an audio stream).

Most significant bit first means that the most significant bit will arrive first: hence e.g. the
hexadecimal number 0x12 , 00010010 in binary representation, will arrive as the sequence
0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 .

Least significant bit first means that the least significant bit will arrive first: hence e.g. the same
hexadecimal number 0x12 , again 00010010 in binary representation, will arrive as the
(reversed) sequence 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 .

LSB 0 bit numbering

LSB 0: A container for 8-bit binary number with the

highlighted least significant bit assigned the bit
number 0

When the bit numbering starts at zero for the least significant bit (LSB) the numbering scheme is
called LSB 0.[1] This bit numbering method has the advantage that for any unsigned number the
value of the number can be calculated by using exponentiation with the bit number and a base
of 2.[2] The value of an unsigned binary integer is therefore

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where bi denotes the value of the bit with number i, and N denotes the number of bits in total.

MSB 0 bit numbering

MSB 0: A container for 8-bit binary number with the

highlighted most significant bit assigned the bit
number 0

When the bit numbering starts at zero for the most significant bit (MSB) the numbering scheme
is called MSB 0.

The value of an unsigned binary integer is therefore

Other

ALGOL 68's elem operator is effectively "MSB 1 bit numbering" as the bits are numbered from
left to right, with the first bit (bits elem 1) being the "most significant bit", and the expression
(bits elem bits width) giving the "least significant bit". Similarly, when bits are coerced (typecast)
to an array of Boolean ([ ]bool bits), the first element of this array (bits[lwb bits]) is again the
"most significant bit".

For MSB 1 numbering, the value of an unsigned binary integer is

PL/I numbers BIT strings starting with 1 for the leftmost bit.

The Fortran BTEST function uses LSB 0 numbering.

See also

ARINC 429

Binary numeral system

Signed number representations

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Two's complement

Endianness

Binary logarithm

Unit in the last place (ULP)

Find first set

MAC address: Bit-reversed notation

References

1. Langdon, Glen G. (1982). Computer Design (https://archive.org/details/computerdesign00lang/page/

52) . Computeach Press Inc. p. 52 (https://archive.org/details/computerdesign00lang/page/52) .
ISBN 0-9607864-0-6.

2. "Bit Numbers" (http://www.xcprod.com/titan/XCSB-DOC/bit_numbers.html) . Retrieved 2021-03-30.

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