Question

I’ve never used the >> and << operators, not because I’ve never needed them, but because I don’t know if I could have used them, or where I should have.

100 >> 3 outputs 12 instead of 12.5. Why is this. Perhaps learning where to best use right shift will answer that implicitly, but I’m curious.

Answer 1

Right shift is not division

Let’s look at what right-shift actually does, and it will become clear.

First, recall that a number is stored in memory as a collection of binary digits. If we have 8 bits of memory, we can store 2 as 00000010 and 5 as 00000101.

Right-shift takes those digits and shifts them to the right. For example, right-shifting our above two digits by one will give 00000001 and 00000010 respectively.

Notice that the lowest digit (right-most) is shifted off the end entirely and has no effect on the final result.