Bitwise Operators

C's bitwise operators work on the bits stored in integral types. They work similar to the logical operators except that instead of working on true and false values they work with ones and zeroes. There are several bitwise operators available:

Symbol      Meaning

  ~           Complement

  &           And

  |            Or

  ^           Exclusive-Or

  <<         Left shift

  >>         Right shift

The complement operator is a unary operator. 

The other bitwise operators are binary, taking two operands.

Bitwise operator works on bits and perform bit by bit operation.

Assume if A = 60; and B = 13; Now in binary format they will be as follows:

A = 0011 1100

B = 0000 1101

-----------------

A&B = 0000 1100

A|B = 0011 1101

A^B = 0011 0001

~A  = 1100 0011

The Bitwise operators supported by C language are

Operator	Description	Example
&	Binary AND Operator copies a bit to the result if it exists in both operands.	(A & B) will give 12 which is 0000 1100
|	Binary OR Operator copies a bit if it exists in eather operand.	(A | B) will give 61 which is 0011 1101
^	Binary XOR Operator copies the bit if it is set in one operand but not both.	(A ^ B) will give 49 which is 0011 0001
~	Binary Ones Complement Operator is unary and has the efect of 'flipping' bits.	(~A ) will give -60 which is 1100 0011
<<	Binary Left Shift Operator. The left operands value is moved left by the number of bits specified by the right operand.	A << 2 will give 240 which is 1111 0000
>>	Binary Right Shift Operator. The left operands value is moved right by the number of bits specified by the right operand.	A >> 2 will give 15 whi