C# 0 The Complete Reference

PART I

C h a p t e r   4 :  

O p e r a t o r s  

73

PART IPART I

The Bitwise Operators

C# provides a set of 

bitwise

 operators that expand the types of problems to which C# can be 

applied. The bitwise operators act directly upon the bits of their operands. They are defined 

only for integer operands. They cannot be used on 

bool

,

float

, or 

double

.

They are called the 

bitwise

 operators because they are used to test, set, or shift the bits 

that comprise an integer value. Among other uses, bitwise operations are important to a 

wide variety of systems-level programming tasks, such as analyzing status information 

from a device. Table 4-1 lists the bitwise operators.