shiftright

Shiftright is a bitwise operation that moves each bit in the binary representation of a value to the right by a specified number of positions. The bits shifted out on the right are discarded, and the bits on the left are filled with zeros in logical shifts, or with the sign bit in arithmetic shifts. In many programming languages two related operators exist: a logical shift right and an arithmetic shift right; the symbols and exact rules vary.

For example, in Java, the operator >> performs an arithmetic shift (sign-extended for signed values), while >>> performs a logical shift that fills with zeros. In C and C++, the result of shifting a signed negative value is implementation-defined, and shifting by an amount greater than or equal to the width of the type is undefined behavior in C. Python uses an arithmetic right shift for integers, sign-extending negative values.

Common examples: 0b11010100 >> 3 equals 0b00011010 (decimal 212 >> 3 = 26). For unsigned numbers the result is simply the floor of the original divided by 2^n.

Uses: shiftright is an efficient way to divide by powers of two, perform bit masking and bit-flag manipulation, and handle low-level data processing such as parsing and protocol handling. In hardware, the operation is implemented by a right shifter circuit, and high-level languages map the operation to CPU instructions.

Shiftright contrasts with left shift, which moves bits toward higher-order positions. Some languages also offer an unsigned right shift or allow rotation operations, which move bits around the ends rather than discarding them.