I'm working in C and need to add and subtract a 64-bit number and a 128-bit number. The result will be held in the 128-bit number. I am using an integer array to store the upper and lower halves of the 128-bit number (i.e. uint64_t bigNum[2], where bigNum[0] is the least significant).
Can anybody help with an addition and subtraction function that can take in bigNum and add/subtract a uint64_t to it?
I have seen many incorrect examples on the web, so consider this:
bigNum[0] = 0;
bigNum[1] = 1;
subtract(&bigNum, 1);
At this point bigNum[0] should have all bits set, while bigNum[1] should have no bits set.
In grade 1 or 2, you should have learn't how to break down the addition of 1 and 10 into parts, by splitting it into multiple separate additions of tens and units. When dealing with big numbers, the same principals can be applied to compute arithmetic operations on arbitrarily large numbers, by realizing your units are now units of 2^bits, your "tens" are 2^bits larger and so on.