Dealing with bits

[ILoveVectors]

I looked into bitset and search google for information
on them but i couldnt find anything good, does
anyone have an information relating to there use,
that comes with example code.

What im looking to do, and if it can be done without
bitset im open to it to, i want to beable to
set a variable equal by using the binary equivalent.

Ex:

???? myByte = 01100001;

and then how to display it in console such as

cout << myByte << endl;

which would display 'a' if i choose to display as a character
or display '97' if i choose to display as a number?

Using bitset i saw the set() function, but that seems like i have to
go in and change a bunch of individual bits? For this id like
to just start with them set where id like them to be.

If bitset the only way, to do this well, then hwo do i display
the bitset as a char or int?

If anyone could help thanks.

P.S.
I looked into prelude bit manipulation in the FAQ, but
its not what im looking for.

[Prelude]

Something like this?

#include <bitset>
#include <iostream>
#include <string>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
  bitset<8> b ( string ( "01100001" ) );

  cout<< b <<'\n'
    << static_cast<char> ( b.to_ulong() ) <<'\n'
    << static_cast<int> ( b.to_ulong() ) <<'\n';
}

The only problem with bitset is that it's not dynamic. You have to specify the number of bits when declaring each variable.

[ILoveVectors]

Thank you that is great!