Will bit-shift by zero bits work correctly?

Question

Say I have a function like this:

inline int shift( int what, int bitCount )
{
    return what >> bitCount;
}

It will be called from diffe

Answer 1

It will work correctly on any widely used architecture (I can vouch for x86, PPC, ARM). The compiler will not be able to reduce it to a noop unless the function is inlined.