Advanced Programming Techniques in C/

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Left Shift and Right Shift Operators

Left Shift and Right Shift Operators

Learn the functionality of the left shift and right shift operators in C.

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The left shift operator

The left shift operator moves all the bits in operand1 to the left by the number of places specified in operand2.

The left shift operator is a binary operator that operates on two operands as shown below:

Example

5 << 2 shifts all the bits in 5 two places to the left. The binary of 5 is 00000101; therefore, upon shifting all the bits two places to the left, the answer would be 00010100, which in decimal is 20.

📝 Note: When the bits are shifted to the left, blanks will be created on the right. These blanks will be filled by 0's.

Program

See the code given below!

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#include<stdio.h>



int main() {

    // Initialize variable

    unsigned char ch = 33 ;

    // Display number

    printf( "%d ", ch ) ; 

    // Display number in decimal format after left-shifting

    printf( "%d ", ch << 1) ; 

    // Display number in hex format after left-shifting

    printf( "%#x ", ch << 1) ; 

}

Line 9: ch << 1 eliminates one bit from the left-hand side of the binary stored in ch and shifts balance bits one position to the left. Left shifting an operand1 << operand2 is equivalent to multiplying operand1 by 2operand2.

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