title: Is there a way to address a single bit in C?
body: <p>I've done some researching on bit addressable microcontrollers. The only one that came across in my path is the Intel MCS-51(<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8051" rel="nofollow noreferrer">wiki page</a>) which is still used very commonly today... I was wondering if you can directly address a bit in C, for example on the 
  SFR region <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8051#Memory_architecture" rel="nofollow noreferrer">wiki 8051 memory architecture</a>.</p>
  
  <p>The bits that I address in the SFR, are they bit addressed directly, or is it a bitwise operation in a bitfield that is byte addressed or is it something else completely?</p>
  
  <p>Specifically, from here: <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3007541/8051-check-if-a-single-bit-is-set">Check if a single bit is set</a>, it looks like the bit is directly manipulated with a MOV, I'm wondering if this is possible in C (with extensions) or does it only look like bitwise operation, but in the background there are some compiler stuff that uses bytes only?</p>
  
  <p>As a follow up question, are there any bit addressable modern processors?</p>