Binary literals

Question

In code, I've seen constants specified in hex format like this:

const int has_nukes        = 0x0001;
const int has_bio_weapons  = 0x0002;
const int has_chem_weapons = 0x0004;
// ...
int arsenal = has_nukes | has_bio_weapons | has_chem_weapons; // all of them
if(arsenal &= has_bio_weapons){
  std::cout << "BIO!!"
}

But it doesn't make sense to me to use the hex format here. Is there a way to do it directly in binary? Something like this:

const int has_nukes        = 0b00000000000000000000000000000001;
const int has_bio_weapons  = 0b00000000000000000000000000000010;
const int has_chem_weapons = 0b00000000000000000000000000000100;
// ...

I'm aware that C/C++ compilers would not build this, but surely there must be a workaround? 

Is this doable in other languages, such as Java?

Answer 1

Binary literals will be supported in C++14 with the following syntax:

0b010101010 /* more zeros and ones */

This functionality is already included in the most recent clang and gcc releases. 

You may test it by running those compilers with the -std=c++1y option.