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Bitwise operators

C provides the following operators for handling bit patterns:

<<

Bit-shift left by a specified number of bit positions

>>

Bit-shift right by a specified number of bit positions

|

Bitwise inclusive OR

^

Bitwise exclusive OR

&

Bitwise AND

~

Bitwise NOT

<<=

Bit-shift left assignment (var = var << value)

>>=

Bit-shift right assignment (var = var >> value)

|=

Exclusive OR assignment (var = var | value)

^=

Inclusive OR assignment (var = var ^ value)

&=

AND assignment (var = var & value)

The meaning and syntax of these operators is given below.

Don't confuse bitwise operators (such as bitwise AND, &) with logical operators (such as logical AND, &&). Bitwise operators operate on each bit in the operand individually.