20.1.8 Bitwise Operators

The following left-associative bitwise binary operators are supported, in descending precedence order:

• Bitwise shift left <<. and bitwise shift right .>>.
• Bitwise AND &.
• Bitwise exclusive OR ^.
• Bitwise inclusive OR |.
• Bitwise concatenation :::.

Both <<. and .>> operators perform logical shifting. Unlike in many other programming languages, arithmetic right-shifting operators are not provided. This means that right shifting always inserts zeroes at the most-significant side of the value operand, whereas left shifting always inserts zeroes at the least-significant side of the value operand.

Left shifting by a number of bits equal or bigger than the size of the value operand is an error, and will trigger either a compile-time error or a run-time E_out_of_bounds exception. This does not apply to right shifting.

Bitwise concatenation works with any integral type, of any bit length.

The following right-associative unary bitwise operators are supported:

• Bitwise complement ~.