Bitwise Operator in C

Table of Contents

Types of Bitwise Operators in C

There are various types of bitwise operators used in all the programming languages. Here is a list of the ones used in C:

Bitwise OR Operator
Bitwise AND Operator
Unary Operator (Binary One’s complement operator)
Bitwise XOR Operator
Binary Right Shift Operator
Binary Left Shift Operator

The table below lists all the Bitwise operations that are supported by the C language. Let us assume that the variable ‘Q’ holds 13 while a variable ‘P’ holds 60, then:

Operator	Meaning	Description	Examples
\|	Bitwise OR operator	It copies a bit when it exists in either of the operands.	(P \| Q) = 61, which is, 0011 1101
&	Bitwise AND operator	It copies a bit to the result when it exists in both the operands.	(P & Q) = 12, which is, 0000 1100
~	Binary Ones complement operator	It is a unary operator that has an effect to ‘flip’ the bits. Meaning, all the 0s become 1s and vice-versa.	(~P ) = ~(60), which is,. 1100 0011
^	Bitwise XOR operator	It is an exclusive OR operator that copies the bit when it is set in one of the operands, but not in both.	(P \| Q) = 61, which is, 0011 1101
>>	Shift operator (Right)	It moves the value of the left operand to the right by the number of bits that the right operand specifies.	P >> 2 = 15 which is, 0000 1111
<<	Shift operator (Left)	It moves the value of the right operand to the left by the number of bits that the right operand specifies.	P << 2 = 240 which is, 1111 0000

Example of Bitwise Operators in C

Let us look at the following example to understand how the bitwise operators work in the C language:

#include <stdio.h>

main() {

unsigned int p = 60; /* 60 = 0011 1100 */

unsigned int q = 13; /* 13 = 0000 1101 */

int r = 0;

r = p | q; /* 61 = 0011 1101 */

printf(“Line 1 – The value of r is %d\n”, r );

r = p & q; /* 12 = 0000 1100 */

printf(“Line 2 – The value of r is %d\n”, r );

r = ~p; /*-61 = 1100 0011 */

printf(“Line 3 – The value of r is %d\n”, r );

r = p ^ q; /* 49 = 0011 0001 */

printf(“Line 4 – The value of r is %d\n”, r );

r = p >> 2; /* 15 = 0000 1111 */

printf(“Line 5 – The value of r is %d\n”, r );

r = p << 2; /* 240 = 1111 0000 */

printf(“Line 6 – The value of r is %d\n”, r );

}