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Bitwise Operators In C

In C, the following 6 operators are bitwise operators (also known as bit operators as they work at the bit-level). They are used to perform bitwise operations in C.

 

  1. The & (bitwise AND) in C or C++ takes two numbers as operands and does AND on every bit of two numbers. The result of AND is 1 only if both bits are 1.  
  2. The | (bitwise OR) in C or C++ takes two numbers as operands and does OR on every bit of two numbers. The result of OR is 1 if any of the two bits is 1. 
  3. The ^ (bitwise XOR) in C or C++ takes two numbers as operands and does XOR on every bit of two numbers. The result of XOR is 1 if the two bits are different. 
  4. The << (left shift) in C or C++ takes two numbers, the left shifts the bits of the first operand, and the second operand decides the number of places to shift. 
  5. The >> (right shift) in C or C++ takes two numbers, right shifts the bits of the first operand, and the second operand decides the number of places to shift. 
  6. The ~ (bitwise NOT) in C or C++ takes one number and inverts all bits of it.

Let’s look at the truth table of the bitwise operators.

       X       

       Y       

       X & Y       

       X | Y       

       X ^ Y       

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

1

1

1

0

0

1

1

1

1

1

1

0

Example of Bitwise Operators in C

The following program uses bitwise operators to perform bit operations in C.

// C Program to demonstrate use of bitwise operators
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
    // a = 5(00000101), b = 9(00001001)
    unsigned char a = 5, b = 9;
 
    // The result is 00000001
    printf("a = %d, b = %d\n", a, b);
    printf("a&b = %d\n", a & b);
 
    // The result is 00001101
    printf("a|b = %d\n", a | b);
 
    // The result is 00001100
    printf("a^b = %d\n", a ^ b);
 
    // The result is 11111010
    printf("~a = %d\n", a = ~a);
 
    // The result is 00010010
    printf("b<<1 = %d\n", b << 1);
 
    // The result is 00000100
    printf("b>>1 = %d\n", b >> 1);
 
    return 0;
   
}
 
 
Output 
a = 5, b = 9
a & b = 1
a | b = 13
a ^ b = 12
~a = -6
b << 1 = 18
b >> 1 = 4