Python Library Reference

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2.2.4.1 Bit-string Operations on Integer Types

Plain and long integer types support additional operations that make sense only for bit-strings. Negative numbers are treated as their 2's complement value (for long integers, this assumes a sufficiently large number of bits that no overflow occurs during the operation).

The priorities of the binary bit-wise operations are all lower than the numeric operations and higher than the comparisons; the unary operation "~" has the same priority as the other unary numeric operations ("+" and "-").

This table lists the bit-string operations sorted in ascending priority (operations in the same box have the same priority):

Operation	Result	Notes
x | y	bitwise or of x and y
x ^ y	bitwise exclusive or of x and y
x & y	bitwise and of x and y
x « n	x shifted left by n bits	(1), (2)
x » n	x shifted right by n bits	(1), (3)
~x	the bits of x inverted

 

Notes:

(1)

Negative shift counts are illegal and cause a ValueError to be raised.

(2)

A left shift by n bits is equivalent to multiplication by pow(2, n) without overflow check.

(3)

A right shift by n bits is equivalent to division by pow(2, n) without overflow check.

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Python Library Reference

Previous: 2.2.4 Numeric Types Up: 2.2.4 Numeric Types Next: 2.2.5 Iterator Types

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Release 2.2.1, documentation updated on April 10, 2002.