What does (~0L) mean?
I'm doing some X11 ctypes coding, I don't know C but need some help understanding this. In the C code below (might be C++ im not sure) we see (~0L) what does that mean? In Javascript and Python ~0 means -1 . 812 int result = GetProperty(window, property_name, 813 (~0L), // (all of them) 814 &type, &format, &num_items, &properties); Thanks 0L is a long integer value with all the bits set to zero - that's generally the definition of 0 . The ~ means to invert all the bits, which leaves you with a long integer with all the bits set to one. In two's complement arithmetic (which is almost universal)