Summary
| Operation | Purpose | Example Use Case |
|---|---|---|
| AND | Masking/Clearing | Extract specific bits |
| OR | Setting | Turn on flag bits |
| XOR | Toggling/Comparing | Flip bits, find differences |
| NOT | Inversion | Create complementary masks |
| BSL | Multiplication | Fast multiply by power of 2 |
| BSR | Division | Fast divide by power of 2 |
Bitwise operators are one of those tools that seem esoteric until the moment you need them, at which point they become indispensable. They represent a direct line to the machine’s native operations—a reminder that underneath all the high-level abstractions, computers are still just flipping bits according to Boolean logic, and sometimes it’s useful to speak their language directly.