Embedded Bit Toggling | Dataford Interview Questions

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Problem

An Itron OpenWay Riva device may need selected configuration flags toggled in a packed unsigned status value. Implement a function that toggles every bit selected by a mask while leaving all other bits unchanged.

Use the bitwise XOR operation. A 1 in mask flips the corresponding bit in value, while a 0 leaves it unchanged.

Formal Specification

Implement toggle_bits(value, mask, bit_width):

value is an integer containing the current unsigned bit field.
mask is an integer identifying which bits to toggle.
bit_width is the number of valid bits in the field.
Return the resulting unsigned integer after toggling the selected bits.

The mask is guaranteed to contain no bits outside the specified width.

Constraints

1 <= bit_width <= 32
0 <= value < 2 ** bit_width
0 <= mask < 2 ** bit_width
The mask contains no bits outside bit_width

Function Signature

def toggle_bits(value, mask, bit_width):