What does a bitwise shift (left or right) do and what is it used for?

Question

I\'ve seen the operators >> and << in various code that I\'ve looked at (none of which I actually understood), but I\'m just wondering

Answer 1

Left bit shifting to multiply by any power of two. Right bit shifting to divide by any power of two.

x = x << 5; // Left shift
y = y >> 5; // Right shift

In C/C++ it can be written as,

#include 

x = x * pow(2, 5);
y = y / pow(2, 5);