Shifting

What is it?:

It’s the moving of Binary of a data type left or right. It actually corresponds to multiplication and division of the binary number:

Left Shifts:

• Fill in missing space with 0’s.
• 6 shifted two to the left is 24. Represented as: $00000110<<2\to 00011000$
• Shift left by $n\equiv$ multiplying by $2^n$

Right Shifts:

Options:

1. Logical Shift: Fill space with 0’s (for non-numerical data).
2. Arithmetic Shift: Fill with MSB (for 2’s complement numbers).
   

• By shifting right by $n$, that’s the same as dividing by $2^n$.
• The difference is logical shift ignores the sign, whereas arithmetic respects it.