Left Shift Operator (<<)

Left Shift Operator

Bitwise Left Shift Operator is used to push zero bits on the rightmost side and let the leftmost bits to overflow. This is also called Zero-Fill Left-Shift.

Symbol

The symbol of bitwise Left Shift operator is <<.

Syntax

The syntax to do bitwise Left Shift operation for the operands: x and y, is

x << y

This operation left shifts the bits in x, by y number of times.

Example

The following is a simple example of how bitwise Left Shift operation is done for given two numbers.

x = 5
y = 2

#bit level
     x = 00000101
x << 2 = 00010100

Therefore x << y = 20

In this following program, we take integer values in x, and y, and perform bitwise Left Shift operation x << y.

Python Program

x = 5
y = 2
output = x << y
print(f'{x}<<{y} = {output}')

Output

5<<2 = 20

Summary

In this tutorial of Python Examples, we learned about Bitwise Left Shift Operator, and it's usage with the help of examples.