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:
- >> Shifts bits right
- << Shifts bits left
- & Does an AND compare on two groups of bits
- | Does an OR compare on two groups of bits
- ^ Does an XOR compare on two groups of bits
- ~ Complements a group of bits
Not all programming languages support bitwise operators.
