When learning a new programming language, there is usually a table in the documentation that shows the various operators that can be used with numbers. While we are all familiar with +,-,*, and /, there’s always that one section that most of us skip. These are the bitwise operators <<, >>, &, ^ and |. While at first, they might seem obscure, unhelpful, or tools for people who write in low level programming languages, they do serve a purpose. Even more surprising, some of the most useful ways that can be used do not require any math at all. Bitwise operations allow us to manipulate the binary representation of the data which turns out to be extremely useful. Let’s take a look at these strange operators and see if we can make sense of them.
Great article! Thank you very much!
“Typical of apple to hide this useful feature from us”
It's right there on the menu. View -> Programmer
Binary isn't a language. The only language computers understand is _machine code_. Fundamental difference between the two.