Why bit shift

That is, each bit may indicate the status of something Of course, in that case, you probably wouldn't want to bit-shift but you might want to do some individual bit-writes.

If you are working at the bit-level, you'll normally use hexadecimal in your program, instead of decimal so you can more easily visualize what's going on.

With a little memorization, you can learn to convert between hex and binary values of any size in your head. Converting between decimal and binary is not so easy! The microcontroller doesn't care if you use decimal, hex, octal, or binary Bit Shifting.

Techopedia Explains Bit Shifting. What Does Bit Shifting Mean? Bit shifting may also be known as a bitwise operation. Techopedia Explains Bit Shifting There are two variations to bit shifting, shift right and shift left, and it is further defined by the number of places in which the shift should occur.

Share this Term. Assembly Language Microcontroller. Tech moves fast! Stay ahead of the curve with Techopedia! Never have. Just the OAuth methods above. Interview Cake. Toggle navigation Interview Cake. Interview Tips First coding interview? Start here. Bit Shifting. Left Shifts When shifting left, the most-significant bit is lost, and a 0 bit is inserted on the other end.

Logical Right Shifts When shifting right with a logical right shift , the least-significant bit is lost and a 0 is inserted on the other end. Arithmetic Right Shifts When shifting right with an arithmetic right shift , the least-significant bit is lost and the most-significant bit is copied. Share Tweet Share. If you have an app that has several features, but you only want certain configurable ones enabled, you could do something like:.

It's not often used so much to save space, though, as it is for one or both of two typical reasons:. The space savings rarely justify the added complexity, and bit shifts really aren't complex enough to stop someone determined to understand your code. So it has 24x7 values that have to be stored somehow. I chose to store it as 7 ints, so each day is represented with one integer, and each hour in it as one bit.

Just an example where it can be useful. Sometimes especially in older Windows programming , there will be information encoded in "high order" and "low order" bits of a value Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. Why bit shifting? Ask Question. Asked 10 years, 1 month ago. Active 10 years, 1 month ago. Viewed 4k times. Improve this question.

Jeremy Holovacs Jeremy Holovacs