Home » Tutorials » Learn C Programming » Bitwise operators in C

Learn C Programming

 Prev

Bitwise operators in C

These operators are used for the manipulation of data at the bit level. We can’t apply these operators with floating point data types.

OperatorMeaningDescription
&Bit-wise ANDFor example, we have x = 2, and y = 3;(In binary x = 0000 0010 and y = 0000 0011), then x&y = 2(0000 0010)(representing only in 8-bits) The AND operation is carried out between consecutive bits.
|Bit-wise ORFor example, we have x = 2, and y = 3;(In binary x = 0000 0010 and y = 0000 0011), then x|y = 3(0000 0011)
^Bit-wise XORFor example, we have x = 2, and y = 3;(In binary x = 0000 0010 and y = 0000 0011), then x^y = 1(0000 0001)
<<Bit-wise LEFT SHIFTFor example, we have x = 2, and y = 3;(In binary x = 0000 0010), then x<<2 = 8(0000 1000)
>>Bit-wise RIGHT SHIFTFor example, we have x = 2, and y = 3;(In binary x = 0000 0010), then x>>1 = 1(0000 0001)
Bit-wise Operators

Example:

/*
    Bit-wise operators
*/
#include <stdio.h>

int main(){
    int x = 2, y = 3;
    printf("x&y = %d\n", x&y);
    printf("x|y = %d\n", x|y);
    printf("x^y = %d\n", x^y);
    printf("x<<2 = %d\n", x<<2);
    printf("x>>1 = %d\n", x>>1);
    return 0;
}

Expected Output:

x&y = 2
x|y = 3
x^y = 1
x<<2 = 8
x>>1 = 1
Next