When should I use a bitwise operator?

Question

I read the following Stack Overflow questions, and I understand the differences between bitwise and logical.

• Difference between & and && in

Answer 1

In most cases, you'll probably want to use logical operators. They're used for combining logical conditions, generally to control program flow, e.g. ($isAlive && $wantsToEat).

Bitwise operators are used when you want to perform operations on a bit-by-bit basis on the underlying binary representations of integers. e.g. (5 & 3) == 7. As others have suggested, there's usually not a lot of call for this in the sort of application that tends to get written in PHP (although there is in lower-level languages, like C).