Learned Something New (or actually a review of something old)!

Since I'm forcing myself to think in terms of OO (Object Orientation), I forgot that computers are still 1 and 0's! As I'm reading code to understand design patterns, algorithms, and methods others folks are using, I came across something I've never used before (at least in my own code): shift operators.

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I've always thought of the chevrons as output redirection in scripting or in C++. I've forgotten they actually shift the bits either to the left or right:

(1 << 24) == 0001 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111