Bitwise Operations

All about bitwise operations in Ruby.

Notes

NOT

The ~ operator: one’s complement (returns a number where each bit is flipped)

By default, this returns a signed integer, so ~0b0101 produces -0b110. To convert to unsigned, & with 0xFFFF_FFFF

AND

The & operator: Bitwise AND.

OR

XOR

The [^](https://ruby-doc.org/core-2.5.0/Integer.html#method-i-5E) operator: Bitwise EXCLUSIVE OR.

Shift

The « operator: shift left.

The » operator: shift right.

String Representation

The to_s(base=10) method. 3.to_s(2) => "11"

Example Code

The examples.rb file wraps up demonstrations of all these features in a set of tests. Not very exciting to run!

$ ruby examples.rb
Run options: --seed 42933

# Running:

.......

Finished in 0.001204s, 5813.9542 runs/s, 6644.5191 assertions/s.

7 runs, 8 assertions, 0 failures, 0 errors, 0 skips

Credits and References

• Ruby’s Bitwise Toolbox: Operators, Applications and Magic Tricks
• Ruby’s Bitwise Operators
• Ruby - Operators
• Bit Twiddling Hacks