How does the industry refer to storing mulitple boolean value state in one integer?

Question

Here is an easy question.

How does the industry refer to storing mulitple boolean value state in one integer?

The SetWindowPos api is an example.

SWP_NOSIZE         DEFINE 1
SWP_NOMOVE         DEFINE 2
SWP_NOZORDER       DEFINE 4
SWP_NOREDRAW       DEFINE 8
SWP_NOACTIVATE     DEFINE 16

If the integer is 11 then 1, 2 and 8 (SWP_NOSIZE, SWP_NOMOVE and SWP_NOREDRAW) are on.

What is the buzz word for this pattern?

Answer 1

a bit field

Answer 2

I have always called this "bit flags", since they are flags, and there is one flag per bit. This seems fairly standard, though I can't guarantee how standard...

Answer 3

bitset or bit array

Answer 4

I prefer "flags" too. This term is used consistently in many places where powers of 2 are ORed (to give one example, System.Reflection.BindingFlags in .NET, and there are many others).

The term "bit field" has a specific meaning, e.g. bit fields in C structs - but there is no such struct in the above example; the programmer chose to use an integer instead.