Explain the use of a bit vector for determining if all characters are unique

Question

I am confused about how a bit vector would work to do this (not too familiar with bit vectors). Here is the code given. Could someone please walk me through this?

Answer 1

Just in case if anyone is looking for kotlin equivalent of unique characters in a string using bit vector

fun isUnique(str: String): Boolean {
    var checker = 0
    for (i in str.indices) {
        val bit = str.get(i) - 'a'
        if (checker.and(1 shl bit) > 0) return false
        checker = checker.or(1 shl bit)
    }
    return true
}

Ref: https://www.programiz.com/kotlin-programming/bitwise