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Bitwise Operator

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Last Updated May 24, 2021 7:36 am

A bitwise operator is an operator that manipulates individual bits. The operators that most people are familiar with, such as the addition operator (+), work with bytes or groups of bytes. Occasionally, however, programmers need to manipulate the bits within a byte. The C programming language supports the following bitwise operators:

  1. >>Shifts bits right
  2. Shifts bits left
  3. &Does an AND compare on two groups of bits
  4. |Does an OR compare on two groups of bits
  5. ^Does an XOR compare on two groups of bits
  6. ~ Complements a group of bits

Not all programming languages support bitwise operators.