Bitwise negation

Bitwise operations handle each bit of a number individually. We use them often when programming. Let’s consider how they work in detail.

Bitwise negation

First, we will consider the simplest bitwise operation: negation. It is also called bitwise NOT. The tilde symbol (~) indicates this operation in Bash.

When doing bitwise negation, we swap the value of each bit of an integer. This means that we replace each 1 to 0, and vice versa.

Here is an example of doing bitwise NOT for the number 5:

5 = 101
~5 = 010

The bitwise NOT is a simple operation when we talk about mathematics. However, there are pitfalls when we use it in programming. We should keep two things in ...