Bitwise Operators in C: AND, OR, XOR, Shift & Complement

What are Bitwise Operators?

Bitwise operators work directly on the individual bits of integer values.

List of Bitwise Operators

• & — Bitwise AND
• | — Bitwise OR
• ^ — Bitwise XOR
• ~ — Bitwise Complement (one's complement)
• << — Left shift
• >> — Right shift

int a = 5;   // 0101
int b = 3;   // 0011
printf("%d", a & b);   // 1  (0001)
printf("%d", a | b);   // 7  (0111)
printf("%d", a ^ b);   // 6  (0110)
printf("%d", a << 1);  // 10 (1010)

Common Uses

Bitwise operators are widely used in embedded programming, flags, masks, and performance-critical code.