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In the C programming language, operations can be performed on a bit level using bitwise operators. Bitwise operations are contrasted by byte-level operations which characterize the bitwise operators' logical counterparts, the AND, OR, NOT operators. Instead of performing on individual bits, byte-level operators perform on strings of eight bits ...
In computer programming, a bitwise operation operates on a bit string, a bit array or a binary numeral (considered as a bit string) at the level of its individual bits.It is a fast and simple action, basic to the higher-level arithmetic operations and directly supported by the processor.
Source code that does bit manipulation makes use of the bitwise operations: AND, OR, XOR, NOT, and possibly other operations analogous to the boolean operators; there are also bit shifts and operations to count ones and zeros, find high and low one or zero, set, reset and test bits, extract and insert fields, mask and zero fields, gather and ...
For example, (a > 0 and not flag) and (a > 0 && !flag) specify the same behavior. As another example, the bitand keyword may be used to replace not only the bitwise-and operator but also the address-of operator, and it can be used to specify reference types (e.g., int bitand ref = n).
In computer programming, the exclusive or swap (sometimes shortened to XOR swap) is an algorithm that uses the exclusive or bitwise operation to swap the values of two variables without using the temporary variable which is normally required. The algorithm is primarily a novelty and a way of demonstrating properties of the exclusive or operation.
Haskell likewise currently lacks standard support for bitwise operations, but both GHC and Hugs provide a Data.Bits module with assorted bitwise functions and operators, including shift and rotate operations and an "unboxed" array over Boolean values may be used to model a Bit array, although this lacks support from the former module.
Bitboards allow the computer to answer some questions about game state with one bitwise operation. For example, if a chess program wants to know if the white player has any pawns in the center of the board (center four squares) it can just compare a bitboard for the player's pawns with one for the center of the board using a bitwise AND operation.
Logical operators over bit vectors (corresponding to finite Boolean algebras) are bitwise operations. But not every usage of a logical connective in computer programming has a Boolean semantic. For example, lazy evaluation is sometimes implemented for P ∧ Q and P ∨ Q , so these connectives are not commutative if either or both of the ...