Bitwise operation - Zero-fill right shift (>>>) usages?

Question

Generally speaking, bit shifting (>> , <<) allows us to divide / multiply by ^2

Example :

      9 (base 10): 0         


        

Answer 1

A simple and often use case is to convert a variable to 32-bit unsigned integer(UInt32). When you do variable >>> 0, the variable will stay the same if it is already a UInt32 and will be 0 if it is not. e.g.

using example:

function convert( arrayLikeVariable){
   // we dont know for sure if length is UInt32
   // e.g. arrayLikeVariable.length = "zavarakatranemia"
   // so we do >>> 0
   var len = arrayLikeVariable >>> 0 
   // Now len is UInt32 for sure. 
   [..]
   // code using the len
}

If you want a complete example see the Polyfill here:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/indexOf

if (!Array.prototype.indexOf)  Array.prototype.indexOf = (function(Object, max, min){
  "use strict";
  return function indexOf(member, fromIndex) {
    if(this===null||this===undefined)throw TypeError("Array.prototype.indexOf called on null or undefined");

    var that = Object(this), Len = that.length >>> 0, i = min(fromIndex | 0, Len);
    if (i < 0) i = max(0, Len+i); else if (i >= Len) return -1;

    if(member===void 0){ for(; i !== Len; ++i) if(that[i]===void 0 && i in that) return i; // undefined
    }else if(member !== member){   for(; i !== Len; ++i) if(that[i] !== that[i]) return i; // NaN
    }else                           for(; i !== Len; ++i) if(that[i] === member) return i; // all else

    return -1; // if the value was not found, then return -1
  };
})(Object, Math.max, Math.min);