Bitwise Operators

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Syntax

AND-expression & equality-expression

exclusive-OR-expression ^ AND-expression

inclusive-OR-expression exclusive-OR-expression

~ cast-expression

shift-expression << additive-expression

shift-expression >> additive-expression

Remarks

Use the bitwise operators to modify the individual bits rather than the number.

Operator	What it does
&	bitwise AND; compares two bits and generates the result 1 if both bits are 1, otherwise it returns 0.
|	bitwise inclusive OR; compares two bits and generates the result 1 if either or both bits are 1, otherwise it returns 0.
^	bitwise exclusive OR; compares two bits and generates the result 1 if the bits are complementary, otherwise it returns 0.
~	bitwise complement; inverts each bit. ~ is used to create destructors.
>>	bitwise shift right; moves the bits to the right, discards the far right bit and if unsigned assigns 0 to the left most bit, otherwise sign extends.
<<	bitwise shift left; moves the bits to the left, it discards the far left bit and assigns 0 to the right most bit.

Both operands in a bitwise expression must be of an integral type.

A	B	A & B	A ^ B	A | B
0	0	0	0	0
0	1	0	1	1
1	0	0	1	1
1	1	1	0	1

Note: &, >>, << are context sensitive. & can also be the pointer reference operator.

Note: >> is often overloaded to be the input operator in I/O expressions. << is often overloaded to be the output operator in I/O expressions.

See Also

• Overloading the Class Member Access Operator ->
• Alternative Representations of Tokens (C++)