Adam Langley
BitGet is just an API RFC at the moment, so I'm just describing it here - not trying to justify it.
In BitGet there's getAsWord[8|16|32|64] which take a number of bits ($n$) and returns the next $n$ bits in the bottom of a Word$x$. Thus, getAsWord8 is what you call getBits and, if you had a 48 bit number, you could use getAsWord64 and the bottom 48-bits of the resulting Word64 would be what you want.
Equally, asking for more than $x$ bits when calling getAsWord$x$ is a mistake, however I don't check for it in the interest of speed.
There are also get[Left|Right]ByteString which return the next $n$ bits in a ByteString of Word8's. The padding is either at the end of the last byte (left aligned) or at the beginning of the first byte (right aligned).
Ok so I should be doing something like this. I'm not clear what happens if you are reading from a socket and not all the input has arrived but I'll think about that over the weekend. Another thought: could e.g. getRightByteString be in the IO monad and then I don't have to run the Get(?) monad? Or is that a really stupid question? Dominic. import qualified Data.ByteString as B import Data.Word import IO import qualified Data.Binary.Strict.BitGet as BG test = do h <- openFile "foobarbaz" ReadMode b <- B.hGetContents h let ebms = test2 b case ebms of Left s -> return s Right bms -> return (concat ((map (show . B.unpack) bms))) test1 = do bm1 <- BG.getRightByteString 2 bm2 <- BG.getRightByteString 2 return [bm1,bm2] test2 bs = BG.runBitGet bs test1