From: "matthew p. conte" Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp Subject: Re: Binary << ? Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 16:37:03 -0500 Organization: little, if any Lines: 23 Message-ID: <6epegv$pi0@dfw-ixnews3.ix.netcom.com> References: <01bd5261$69dc6a00$4a3e64c2 AT default> Reply-To: "matthew p. conte" NNTP-Posting-Host: alb-ny6-58.ix.netcom.com To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp Precedence: bulk laine wrote: >Can someone tell me how the binary << work? All kinds of off topic, but... << and >> are the binary shift operators. They shift the bits in a variable or a number representation... If you had an unsigned char b = 4; the bits look like this: 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 and you did a shift to the left by 1: b = b<<1; (or even better b<<=1) the bits would now be: 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 making b = 8. So just imagine that bitshifts to the left are multiplying by powers of 2, and those to the right are dividing by powers of 2. So: b >>= 3; is dividing by 2^3 or 8. Good luck, Matt.