I'm not really sure, but it sort of sounds like you want to do something along this line...
Which I think is saying that I believe you need to do the bitset differently.

Thanks Dave. Maybe I should have explained my problem better though. I am getting a character string that represents a line in an image, in order to do a pixel count for that line of the image I need to get the value of individual bits of the characters. Here is what I have written:

[PHP]#include <iostream>
#include <bitset>
#include <cstring>
#include <stdlib>

int main()
{
long pixelCount = 0;
char* pLine;
long startX = 10; //arbitrary starting point on line
long endX = 45; //arbitrary end point on line

/* section of code that returns a char string pLine
this line is 312 bytes long*/
pLine = "HELLO"; //Used for example

for(long x = startX; x < endX; x++)
{
char init = pLine[x]; //retrieving individual char
std::bitset<8> bits(init);

if(bits.any()) //checking if any bits of the char are on
{
for(int i = 0; i < 7; i++)
{
if(bits.test(i))
{
pixelCount++; //test each bit and if set increment count
}
}
}
}
std::cout << pixelCount << std::endl;
system("PAUSE");
return 0;
}[/PHP]

Giving a count of 35

Originally I wanted to use the bitset::count on the entire char string but it wasn't possible to set up a bitset with the character string, so i tried to use it on just individual chars but got a compile error in Borland:

[Linker Error] Unresolved external '_STL::_Bs_G<bool>::_S_bit_count' referenced from C:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\MY DOCUMENTS\SRC

i was calling it like so:
[PHP] bits.count();[/PHP]

The way I have done it is working fine, just thought if the bitset::count member was function was availaiable it would increase speed?!