Doubly agreed -- similar patterns appear elsewhere to avoid off-by-one errors and bitmasking is fairly intuitive to anyone regularly working at that level. I was surprised at the author not recognizing this idiom, but you have to learn it sometime!
I was further stunned by the seeming naivety of the author's align_2() implementation, but then it does get the job done, eventually. My naive approach would've been roughly align_3(), but using integer math and modulus.
On the other hand, younger team members were recently stunned by code I did for translation of a binary protocol into more easily handled pieces using what I think of as typical idioms, so this article might get sent around Monday morning.
I was further stunned by the seeming naivety of the author's align_2() implementation, but then it does get the job done, eventually. My naive approach would've been roughly align_3(), but using integer math and modulus.
On the other hand, younger team members were recently stunned by code I did for translation of a binary protocol into more easily handled pieces using what I think of as typical idioms, so this article might get sent around Monday morning.