Java, A Beginner's Guide, 5th Edition, 5th Edition

The Bitwise Operators

In Chapter 2 you learned about Java’s arithmetic, relational, and logical operators. Although these are the most commonly used, Java provides additional operators that expand the set of problems to which Java can be applied: the bitwise operators. The bitwise operators can be used on values of type long, int, short, char, or byte. Bitwise operations cannot be used on boolean, float, or double, or class types. They are called the bitwise operators because they are used to test, set, or shift the individual bits that make up a value. Bitwise operations are important to a wide variety of systems-level programming tasks in which status information from a device must be interrogated or constructed. Table 5-1 lists the bitwise ...