Java™ How to Program, Seventh Edition

L.1. Introduction

This appendix presents an extensive discussion of bit-manipulation operators, followed by a discussion of class BitSet, which enables the creation of bit-array-like objects for setting and getting individual bit values. Java provides extensive bit-manipulation capabilities for programmers who need to get down to the “bits-and-bytes”level. Operating systems, test equipment software, networking software and many other kinds of software require that the programmer communicate “directly with the hardware.” We now discuss Java’s bit-manipulation capabilities and bitwise operators.