ffs - Man Page

find first bit set in a word

Library

Standard C library (libc, -lc)

Synopsis

#include <strings.h>

int ffs(int i);
int ffsl(long i);
int ffsll(long long i);

Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

ffs():

    Since glibc 2.12:
        _XOPEN_SOURCE >= 700
            || ! (_POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 200809L)
            || /* glibc >= 2.19: */ _DEFAULT_SOURCE
            || /* glibc <= 2.19: */ _BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE
    Before glibc 2.12:
        none

ffsl(), ffsll():

    Since glibc 2.27:
        _DEFAULT_SOURCE
    Before glibc 2.27:
        _GNU_SOURCE

Description

The ffs() function returns the position of the first (least significant) bit set in the word i. The least significant bit is position 1 and the most significant position is, for example, 32 or 64. The functions ffsll() and ffsl() do the same but take arguments of possibly different size.

Return Value

These functions return the position of the first bit set, or 0 if no bits are set in i.

Attributes

For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).

InterfaceAttributeValue
ffs(), ffsl(), ffsll()Thread safetyMT-Safe

Standards

ffs()

POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, 4.3BSD.

ffsl()
ffsll()

GNU.

See Also

memchr(3)

Referenced By

memchr(3), signal-safety(7).

The man pages ffsl(3) and ffsll(3) are aliases of ffs(3).

2023-11-19 Linux man-pages 6.7