Bitwise Operations for Students

Learn AND, OR, XOR, shifts, and masks—the primitives behind every bitmask trick.

Try this in Python

a, b = 0b1100, 0b1010
print(bin(a & b), bin(a | b), bin(a ^ b))
print(a << 1, a >> 1)
print(bin((1 << 4) - 1))  # low 4 bits set

Key takeaways

• Precedence matters—parenthesize shifts with masks.
• 1 << k singles out bit k.
• Unsigned right shift is rare in Python contests.