Hi Payal ,
Just my addition
When you are shifthing right ( >> ) --- the leftmost(top) bits exposed by the right shift are filled in with the previous contents of the top bit & not just zero's .
We would've got the answer as 1 if we were using " >>> " instead of " >> " .
" >>> " always shifts zero's into the high order bit .
This should help you explain the answer .
The interesting thing about your question is that no matter how much you use " >> " to shift -1 to the right the result would always be -1 .
Hope hat helps

[This message has been edited by Ashish Hareet (edited July 27, 2001).]