Bitwise Operators

In the following lesson, you will be introduced to bitwise operators.

We'll cover the following

Types of Bitwise Operators

Bitwise operators are operators that perform operations on individual bits of integer types. Below is a list of the bitwise operators supported by Scala.

Operator Name Use
& Bitwise AND If the corresponding bit in both operands is 1 it will give a 1, else 0
| Bitwise OR If the corresponding bit in at least one operand is 1 it will give a 1 else 0
^ Bitwise XOR If the corresponding bit in only one operand is 1 it will give a 1 else 0
~ Bitwise Ones Complement Copies a bit to the result after reversing it

The above operators work on binary numbers. They automatically convert each decimal number into its binary form, perform the specific operation on that number, convert the new binary number into decimal form, and return the result.

Follow the Rules

Below we have a list of rules that each operator follows. For bitwise operators, we work with binary numbers. Hence, instead of false and true, we will be using 1 and 0 where 1 acts as true and 0 acts as false. bit can be either 1 or 0.

Let’s now see these rules in action. We will take the first operand A to be 12 and second operand B to be 5.

Try to figure out what the output would be before pressing RUN.

Press + to interact
val A = 12
val B = 5
println(~A)
println(~B)
println(A & B)
println(A | B)
println(A ^ B)

Understanding the Code

The output of the code might not be as clear as the outputs we’ve been looking at throughout this chapter. Let’s break down what the operators are doing one step at a time.

A & B

The operator will first convert each decimal operand into its binary form.

  • 12 in binary form is 00000000 11001100
  • 5 in binary form is 00000000 01010101

From there, it will apply the above rules for the binary AND operator (&) on each pair of bits, i.e. the first bit of 12 with the first bit of 5 and so on.

And that is how A & B will yield a result of 4.

Try to map the rules onto the other operations and see if you get the same result as the output above.

That sums up bitwise operators. Let’s move on to our final type of operator, assignment operator, in the next lesson.