this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
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When you're working with the binary representation of numbers.
In your code you had three numbers 25, 10 and 5. If we write those number in binary we get:
(The 0b at the start is just a way of saying "this is binary")
When you do a bitwise-or, it's a bit like adding up but you don't bother with carrying anything. So let's do 25 | 10, starting at the right-hand end going bit by bit (bitwise):
So the result is 0b00011011 which is 27.
So now you're asking "when would I ever need to do such a thing?" and the flippant answer is "you'll know when you need it".
You're looking for more though, I know. Basically computers often put multiple bits of data into bitstreams (long sequences of bits). Think networking and file storage. Constructing these bitstreams is done with bitwise operators like |, &, ^, << and >>. Together they form a different type of maths to what you're used to.
These operators work in a very similar way to how +, -, * and / work. They take two numbers and return a third. If we rewrite your code using operators you're more familiar with...
...you can see it's obviously wrong because you're doing one comparison with the result of the operation (addition or bitwise-or), not three comparisons.
Thank you for the thorough explanation. It makes sense to me why I had the error that I did. I'll keep this in mind next time when I consider using a bitwise operator.