bitwise operators - How to get position of right most set bit in C

Question

int a = 12;

for eg: binary of 12 is 1100 so answer should be 3 as 3rd bit from right is set.

I want the position of the last most set bit of a. Can anyone tell me how can I do so.

NOTE : I want position only, here I don't want to set or reset the bit. So it is not duplicate of any question on stackoverflow.

Answer 1

This answer Unset the rightmost set bit tells both how to get and unset rightmost set bit for an unsigned integer or signed integer represented as two's complement.

get rightmost set bit,

x & -x
// or
x & (~x + 1)

unset rightmost set bit,

x &= x - 1
// or
x -= x & -x  // rhs is rightmost set bit

why it works

x:                     leading bits  1  all 0
~x:           reversed leading bits  0  all 1
~x + 1 or -x: reversed leading bits  1  all 0
x & -x:                       all 0  1  all 0

eg, let x = 112, and choose 8-bit for simplicity, though the idea is same for all size of integer.

// example for get rightmost set bit
x:             01110000
~x:            10001111
-x or ~x + 1:  10010000
x & -x:        00010000

// example for unset rightmost set bit
x:             01110000
x-1:           01101111
x & (x-1):     01100000