What are bitwise shift (bit-shift) operators and how do they work?

Question

I\'ve been attempting to learn C in my spare time, and other languages (C#, Java, etc.) have the same concept (and often the same operators) ...

What I\'m wondering

Answer 1

Note that in the Java implementation, the number of bits to shift is mod'd by the size of the source.

For example:

(long) 4 >> 65

equals 2. You might expect shifting the bits to the right 65 times would zero everything out, but it's actually the equivalent of:

(long) 4 >> (65 % 64)

This is true for <<, >>, and >>>. I have not tried it out in other languages.