What does >> mean in PHP?

Question

Consider:

echo 50 >> 4;

Output:

3

Why does it output 3?

Answer 1

The >> operator is called a binary right shift operator.

Shifting bits to the right 4 times is the same as dividing by two, four times in a row. The result, in this case would be 3.125. Since 50 is an int, bit shifting will return the floor of this, which is 3.

Put another way, 50 is 0b110010 in binary. Shifted 4 times we have 0b11, which is 3 in decimal.