Logical Bitwise and shift operators

[alzamabar]

Hi, has never anyone of you worked with Logical bitwise and shift operators? I was wondering on the utility of working with bits.
Regards,
Marco

[Thomas Paul]

I once wrote an application that used bit flags because we were accepting data from another application that used bit flags.

[Jessica Sant]

its definitely not the most commonly used functionality in the Java Language -- but it definitely has its purpose... and just for Sh**s and Giggles they put it on the exam
But more importantly -- by learning bit operations -- it really forces you to understand how numeric types work in Java -- how they can be manipulated and all that.

[alzamabar]

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
I once wrote an application that used bit flags because we were accepting data from another application that used bit flags.

Did you have to make operation with bites? I mean shift bytes to the left or to the right, make complements or addition or logical operation?

[alzamabar]

Originally posted by Jessica Sant:
its definitely not the most commonly used functionality in the Java Language -- but it definitely has its purpose... and just for Sh**s and Giggles they put it on the exam
But more importantly -- by learning bit operations -- it really forces you to understand how numeric types work in Java -- how they can be manipulated and all that.

My question was leading to that: i found useful to know how promotion works in java, how logical bitwise operator works and how the << and so on operators work but i was wondering if on the exam i would be demanded to convert data from decimal to octal, hexadecimal and binary. More than difficult it could be time-consuming and open to silly errors.
For istance how would you recognize that:
1 <<31 would lead to a negative number just reading a question on the exam?
Marco