Mastering Bitwise Operators in C# Programming: An In-Depth Guide

The Bitwise operators supported by C# are listed in the following table. Assume variable A holds 60 and variable B holds 13, then −

Operator	Description	Example
&	Binary AND Operator copies a bit to the result if it exists in both operands.	(A & B) = 12, which is 0000 1100
|	Binary OR Operator copies a bit if it exists in either operand.	(A | B) = 61, which is 0011 1101
^	Binary XOR Operator copies the bit if it is set in one operand but not both.	(A ^ B) = 49, which is 0011 0001
~	Binary Ones Complement Operator is unary and has the effect of 'flipping' bits.	(~A ) = 61, which is 1100 0011 in 2's complement due to a signed binary number.
<<	Binary Left Shift Operator. The left operands value is moved left by the number of bits specified by the right operand.	A << 2 = 240, which is 1111 0000
>>	Binary Right Shift Operator. The left operands value is moved right by the number of bits specified by the right operand.	A >> 2 = 15, which is 0000 1111

Example

The following example demonstrates all the bitwise operators available in C# −

 

using System;

namespace OperatorsAppl {

   class Program {
   
      static void Main(string[] args) {
         int a = 60;            /* 60 = 0011 1100 */ 
         int b = 13;            /* 13 = 0000 1101 */
         int c = 0; 
         
         c = a & b;             /* 12 = 0000 1100 */ 
         Console.WriteLine("Line 1 - Value of c is {0}", c );
         
         c = a | b;             /* 61 = 0011 1101 */
         Console.WriteLine("Line 2 - Value of c is {0}", c);
         
         c = a ^ b;             /* 49 = 0011 0001 */
         Console.WriteLine("Line 3 - Value of c is {0}", c);
         
         c = ~a;                /*-61 = 1100 0011 */
         Console.WriteLine("Line 4 - Value of c is {0}", c);
         
         c = a << 2;      /* 240 = 1111 0000 */
         Console.WriteLine("Line 5 - Value of c is {0}", c);
         
         c = a >> 2;      /* 15 = 0000 1111 */
         Console.WriteLine("Line 6 - Value of c is {0}", c);
         Console.ReadLine();
      }
   }
}

When the above code is compiled and executed, it produces the following result −

Line 1 - Value of c is 12
Line 2 - Value of c is 61
Line 3 - Value of c is 49
Line 4 - Value of c is -61
Line 5 - Value of c is 240
Line 6 - Value of c is 15