Reverse Bits of a Number in DSA Python - Build from Scratch

Reverse Bits of a Number

📖 Scenario: Imagine you are working with a simple digital device that stores numbers in binary form. Sometimes, you need to reverse the order of bits in a number to decode a message or fix data alignment.

🎯 Goal: You will write a program that takes a number and reverses its bits. For example, if the number is 13 (binary 1101), reversing the bits gives 11 (binary 1011).

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a variable to hold the input number.

Create a variable to hold the number of bits to reverse.

Write a loop to reverse the bits of the number.

Print the reversed number.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Reversing bits is useful in low-level programming, data encoding, and communication protocols where bit order matters.

💼 Career

Understanding bitwise operations and bit manipulation is important for roles in embedded systems, firmware development, and performance optimization.

1

Create the input number

Create a variable called num and set it to 13.

DSA Python

# Create a variable called num and set it to 13
# Your code here

Hint

Use num = 13 to store the number.

2

Set the number of bits to reverse

Create a variable called bit_size and set it to 4 because we want to reverse 4 bits.

DSA Python

num = 13
# Create a variable called bit_size and set it to 4
# Your code here

Hint

Use bit_size = 4 to specify how many bits to reverse.

3

Reverse the bits of the number

Create a variable called reversed_num and set it to 0. Then use a for loop with variable i from 0 to bit_size - 1. Inside the loop, shift reversed_num left by 1, add the least significant bit of num, and then shift num right by 1.

DSA Python

num = 13
bit_size = 4
# Reverse the bits of num using a for loop
# Your code here

Hint

Use bitwise operators: & to get the last bit, << to shift left, and >> to shift right.

4

Print the reversed number

Print the value of reversed_num.

DSA Python

num = 13
bit_size = 4
reversed_num = 0
for i in range(bit_size):
    reversed_num = (reversed_num > 1
# Print the reversed number
# Your code here

Hint

Use print(reversed_num) to show the result.