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Advanced Programming Techniques in C

Left Shift and Right Shift Operators

Explore how left shift and right shift operators move bits in C, enabling efficient multiplication and division by powers of two. Understand bit manipulation basics for effective programming.

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The left shift operator

The left shift operator moves all the bits in operand1 to the left by the number of places specified in operand2.

The left shift operator is a binary operator that operates on two operands as shown below:

Example

5 << 2 shifts all the bits in 5 two places to the left. The binary of 5 is 00000101; therefore, upon shifting all the bits two places to the left, the answer would be 00010100, which in decimal is 20.

📝 Note: When the bits are shifted to the left, blanks will be created on the right. These blanks will be filled by 0's.

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C
#include<stdio.h>



int main() {

    // Initialize variable

    unsigned char ch = 33 ;

    // Display number

    printf( "%d ", ch ) ; 

    // Display number in decimal format after left-shifting

    printf( "%d ", ch << 1) ; 

    // Display number in hex format after left-shifting

    printf( "%#x ", ch << 1) ; 

}

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