Bitwise operation and usage

Question

Consider this code:

x = 1        # 0001
x << 2       # Shift left 2 bits: 0100
# Result: 4

x | 2        # Bitwise OR: 0011
# Result: 3

x & 1              


        

Answer 1

Think of 0 as false and 1 as true. Then bitwise and(&) and or(|) work just like regular and and or except they do all of the bits in the value at once. Typically you will see them used for flags if you have 30 options that can be set (say as draw styles on a window) you don't want to have to pass in 30 separate boolean values to set or unset each one so you use | to combine options into a single value and then you use & to check if each option is set. This style of flag passing is heavily used by OpenGL. Since each bit is a separate flag you get flag values on powers of two(aka numbers that have only one bit set) 1(2^0) 2(2^1) 4(2^2) 8(2^3) the power of two tells you which bit is set if the flag is on.

Also note 2 = 10 so x|2 is 110(6) not 111(7) If none of the bits overlap(which is true in this case) | acts like addition.