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

Some examples:

• Bit operations for example converting to and from Base64 (which is 6 bits instead of 8)
• doing power of 2 operations (1 << 4 equal to 2^4 i.e. 16)
• Writing more readable code when working with bits. For example, defining constants using 1 << 4 or 1 << 5 is more readable.