simplest crc32 c++ implementation

crc32.h

#pragma once

#include <stdint.h>

struct crc32
{
	static void generate_table(uint32_t(&table)[256])
	{
		uint32_t polynomial = 0xEDB88320;
		for (uint32_t i = 0; i < 256; i++) 
		{
			uint32_t c = i;
			for (size_t j = 0; j < 8; j++) 
			{
				if (c & 1) {
					c = polynomial ^ (c >> 1);
				}
				else {
					c >>= 1;
				}
			}
			table[i] = c;
		}
	}

	static uint32_t update(uint32_t (&table)[256], uint32_t initial, const void* buf, size_t len)
	{
		uint32_t c = initial ^ 0xFFFFFFFF;
		const uint8_t* u = static_cast<const uint8_t*>(buf);
		for (size_t i = 0; i < len; ++i) 
		{
			c = table[(c ^ u[i]) & 0xFF] ^ (c >> 8);
		}
		return c ^ 0xFFFFFFFF;
	}
};


// usage: the following code generates crc for 2 pieces of data
// uint32_t table[256];
// crc32::generate_table(table);
// uint32_t crc = crc32::update(table, 0, data_piece1, len1);
// crc = crc32::update(table, crc, data_piece2, len2);
// output(crc);

Interesting, the second use is handy when crc32 structs in C++.

int main(){
	uint32_t table[256];
	crc32::generate_table(table);

	// Struct, for piece-by-piece, bytewise
	struct DataStruct {
		uint16_t data1;
		uint16_t data2;
		float mypi;
		uint32_t myclock;
		bool begun;
	};

	struct DataStruct Data = {42,17,3.14,123456789,false};
	char *ptr = (char *) &Data;
	uint16_t slen = sizeof(Data);
	printf("Size of Data struct is: %u\n", slen);                 // 16 bytes

	uint32_t CRC = 0;
	for (int cnt = 0; cnt < slen; cnt++) {
		CRC = crc32::update(table, CRC, ptr, 1);
		ptr++;
	}

	printf("Piece-wise crc32 of struct Data is: 0x%X \n", CRC);       // 0x6A8E18CE

}

Caution: This is not guaranteed to be unique when the struct contains any padding bytes, because the compiler is allowed to let the padding bytes be uninitialized. See, eg: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5397447/struct-padding-in-c

There are quite a few different CRC-32 algorithms. This one is the well known CRC-32/ISO-HDLC (also known as CRC-32, CRC-32/ADCCP, CRC-32/V-42, CRC-32/XZ, PKZIP).