This is the continuation of the article Operation
on Bits and Bitwise Operators. If you haven’t read that, it is
strongly recommended that you do, before proceeding with this article.
Bit shifting, as the name signifies, does shifting of bits in byte(s). There
are basically two ways, in which bits (of a byte) can be shifted, either to
the right, or to the left. Thus we have two types of bit shifting operator.
If you think logically, its pretty clear that for bit shifting in a byte, we
need to have two data. We need the byte(s) to shift bits on and the number of
bits to be shifted. Guess what, the two operators need these to data as operands!
Right Bit Shifting Operator (>>)
Syntax: res = var >> num;
This would shift all bits in the variable var, num places
to the right which would get stored to the variable res. So
for example if var has the following bit structure:
var = 00110101 (decimal 53)
And we do the following operation:
res = var >> 2;
We would get res as:
res = 00001101 (decimal 13)
As you can see, shifting of the bits to right disposes the bits
(2) from the right and introduces 0s (2) to the left.
Left Bit Shift Operator (<<)
It is similar to the right shift operator except that the direction of shifting
is opposite. The following is I think enough to explain this:
var = 00110101 (decimal 53)
And we do the following operation:
res = var << 2;
We would get res as:
res = 11010100 (decimal 212)
Just the opposite here, here bits get disposed from the left and new 0s are
introduced to the right.
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