Bitwise operators
Bitwise operators are used to perform operations based around the bits that make up a numeric value. Each operator returns the numeric result of a bitwise operation.The available operators are:
- Binary and:
-band - Binary or:
-bor - Binary exclusive or:
-bxor - Binary not:
-bnot - Shift left:
-shl - Shift right:
-shr
All numeric values can be broken down into bytes and, in turn, bits, a base 2 value.A byte is made up of 8 bits. Each bit in the byte has a value based on its position, highest value (or most significant) first. These bits can be combined to make up any number between 0 and 255.The possible bit values for a byte in base 10 can be represented as a table:
| Bit position | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
| Bit value | 128 | 64 | 32 | 16 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
This is not to say that the bitwise operators only work on byte values. The examples in this section use a single byte as the easiest to describe as a table.Bitwise operators are perhaps not all that...
