Question

If I want to bit shift the integer 5 by 3, so int a = 5; int b = a << 3;, the result would be 40 in decimal as 5 is 101 and 40 is 101000.

What if however, I have the following char array:
00000 00101 and by bit shifting three to the left, I want the result to be 00001 01000. So I want to accommodate for the 0‘s padding. What do you suggest?

Answer 1

If you meant an actual char array, you can use memmove() and memset():

char str[] = "0000000101";

int shift = 3;
int length = strlen(str);

memmove(str, str + shift,length - shift);
memset(str + length - shift,'0',shift);

//  Result:
//  "0000101000"