Bitwise Manipulators
At a hardware level, data is represented as binary numbers. The binary representation of the number 59 is 111011. Bit 0 is the least significant bit, and in this case bit 5 is the most significant bit.
Each bit set is calculated as 2 to the power of the bit set. Bitwise operators allow you to manipulate integer variables at bit level. The following shows the binary representation of the number 59.
binary representation of the number 59 |
bit 5 4 3 2 1 0
2 power n 32 16 8 4 2 1
set 1 1 1 0 1 1 |
With three bits, it is possible to represent the numbers 0 to 7. The following table shows the numbers 0 to 7 in their binary form.
Binary Digits |
000 |
0 |
001 |
1 |
010 |
2 |
011 |
3 |
100 |
4 |
101 |
5 |
110 |
6 |
111 |
7 |
The following table lists the bitwise operators that may be used to manipulate binary numbers.
Binary Digits |
& |
Bitwise AND |
| |
Bitwise OR |
^ |
Bitwise Exclusive OR |
~ |
Bitwise Complement |
<< |
Bitwise Shift Left |
>> |
Bitwise Shift Right |
|
