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

The bit shift operators are more efficient as compared to the / or * operators.

In computer architecture, divide(/) or multiply(*) take more than one time unit and register to compute result, while, bit shift operator, is just one one register and one time unit computation.