lownibble
Lownibble is a term used in computing to refer to the lower nibble of a byte, meaning the least significant four bits. A nibble is half a byte, capable of representing 16 distinct values (0 to 15). In an eight-bit byte, the high nibble comprises the most significant four bits (bits 4–7) and the low nibble comprises the least significant four bits (bits 0–3).
The low nibble is commonly isolated and manipulated using bitwise operations. For an 8-bit value x, the
Practical uses of the low nibble include digit extraction, compact data packing, and nibble-wise arithmetic in
See also: high nibble, nibble, bitwise operations, binary-coded decimal.