How to create a binary matrix

I want to make matrix whose each element's size will be 1 bit, i.e, it will be a binary matrix.How can I do it?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

[Jan]

There is not BIT type in Matlab. Usually binary arrays are stored as LOGICAL, which are equivalent to UINT8. E.g.:

B = rand(16, 16) > 0.8;
whos('B')

Now you can pack this in blocks of 8 elements to a UINT8 array:

T = 2 .^ (0:7).';
B8 = transpose(reshape(B, 8, []));
BitArray = uint8(B8 * T);

Answer 2

[Friedrich]

Hi,

this is not possible in MATLAB and in other languages too like C or C++. In modern computer architectures, a byte is the smallest addressable unit of memory. To pack multiple bits into a byte requires applying extra bit-shift operations. At the compiler level, it's a trade off of memory vs. speed requirements (and in high-performance software, those extra bit-shift operations can add up and slow down the application needlessly).

[snake eyes]

C has a feature known as 'bit field' where I can specify custom length.

however,thanks for the reply.

[Walter Roberson]

C does not specify whether bit-fields start from the beginning or the end of a word, and C permits but does not require bit-fields to cross words. In C, arrays of bit-fields are arrays of words: the "packed" attribute possibility was removed from the C language before C was standardized. There is thus no binary matrix in C, just arrays of structs whose members are bit fields.

[Walter Roberson]

Well, in _popular_ computer architectures; bit-sliced and bit-addressable architectures still have their purposes.

Answer 3

[Sean de Wolski]

To get logical binary values either use:

x = logical(x)

or any conditional operator e.g.

x = x>7
x = x==11;

Answer 4

[Image Analyst]

Use true():

t = true(numRows, numColumns);

"whos" will show you it's one byte per element, like the other solutions.

>> t = true(4,5)
t =
  4×5 logical array
   1   1   1   1   1
   1   1   1   1   1
   1   1   1   1   1
   1   1   1   1   1
>> whos t
  Name      Size            Bytes  Class      Attributes

    t        4x5             20    logical

To get one bit per element, instead of one byte per element, I think you'll have to pack them together yourself.

Answer 5

[Ekta Gujral]

A = randi([0 1], n,m)

[Walter Roberson]

This produces an array of double, not bits.