Bitwise Operator in C language

Bitwise operator in C language

Basicaly bitwise operator or those operators which, whenever be used perform action on the bit values of the data.

There are various bitwise operators used in c language

1.       AND operator  &

And operator perform AND operation on the bit values of operands.

int a=2, b=3,c;

c=a+b;

since a = 2 which  have binary equivalent is 0010 and b=3 and can have binary equivalent is 0011.

So and operation will be performed like:

0  0  1  0

                                                                 &      0  0  1  1 

0  0  1  0

If both the bits are 1 then output also will be 1 other wise 0.

        2.       OR operator  |

OR operator perform OR operation on the Bit values of Numbers.

int a=12,b=7,c;

c = a | b;

since a = 12 so its binary conversion is 1100 and b = 7 so binary conversion is 0111.

The OR operation will be performed like:

                 

1  1  0  0

|  0  1  1  1

 1 1  1  1

                              If any of the bit is 1 then the output value is also 1.

         3.       XOR operator   ^

This operator can perform XOR operation on numbers assigned with it.

 Let a , b and c are three variable then XOR operation will be performed like

                    C = a ^ b;

If there is odd number of one in the bit sequence of respective number then the output will also be 1 otherwise the output will be 0.

If a == b  then

      C = a ^ b = 0;

       4.       Bit wise operator ~ ( 1’s complement )

It will store one’s complement of the number. Since complement  is calculated using the bit sequence of any number, so it is called bitwise operator.

       5.       Left shift Operator   <<

It will shift the bit sequence by 1 position towards left side.

  

A = 

0

0

1

0

       

                     B = a<<1;

B =  

0

1

0

0

     

         

In the above case b will store the value which is shifted bit stream by the left shift operator.

        6.       Right shift operator  >>

Right shift operator will shift the bit stream towards right.

 A =

0

0

1

0

                            B = a>>1;

  B= 

0

0

0

1

      

      

New 0 will be inserted at the starting bit and stream will shift toward right.

Some other facts and operators commonly used in C language:

·         Size of operator will give amount of memory in bytes

       Sizeof( a );

·         A character constant is treated as integer and a float constant is treated as double.

·         Comma operator ( , ): the associatively of comma operator is left to right.

                X=( a, b, c);

The value of c will be assigned to x.

·         Size of and ! have same and higher priority.

·