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+.. highlight:: cpp
+
+.. _lang-bitshift:
+
+Bit shift left (``<<``), bit shift right (``>>``)
+=================================================
+
+Description
+-----------
+
+(Adapted from `The Bit Math Tutorial
+<http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Code/BitMath>`_ in `The Arduino
+Playground <http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Main/HomePage>`_\ )
+
+
+There are two bit shift operators in C++: the left shift operator
+``<<`` and the right shift operator ``>>``. These operators cause the
+bits in the left operand to be shifted left or right by the number of
+positions specified by the right operand.
+
+More information on bitwise math can be obtained in the Wikipedia
+article on `bitwise operations
+<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitwise_operation>`_\ , especially the
+section on shifts in `C, C++, and Java
+<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitwise_operation#Shifts_in_C.2C_C.2B.2B.2C_C.23_and_Java>`_\ .
+
+
+Syntax
+------
+
+``some_int << number_of_bits``
+
+``some_int >> number_of_bits``
+
+
+Parameters
+----------
+
+* **some_int** An integer value or variable.
+
+* **number_of_bits** integer whose value is at most ``8 *
+  sizeof(variable)`` (so ``number_of_bits`` can be at most 32 for
+  ``int`` values, at most ``8`` for ``char`` values, etc.; the various
+  integer sizes are summarized :ref:`in this table
+  <lang-arithmetic-int-sizes>`\ ).
+
+
+
+Example:
+--------
+
+Here are some examples of bit shifting, with the binary representation of the number in comments::
+
+    int a = 5;        // binary: 101
+    int b = a << 3;   // binary: 101000, or 40 in decimal
+    int c = b >> 3;   // binary: 101, or back to 5 like we started with
+
+
+When you left shift a value x by y bits (x << y), the leftmost y bits
+in x are lost, literally shifted out of existence.  We'll do this
+example with ``char`` values (which are integers in the range 0-255,
+and take up 8 bits of memory)::
+
+        char a = 5;        // binary (all 8 bits): 00000101
+        char b = a << 7;   // binary:              10000000 - the first 1 in 101 was discarded
+
+
+If you are certain that none of the ones in a value are being shifted
+into oblivion, a simple way to think of the left-shift operator is
+that it multiplies the left operand by 2 raised to the right operand
+power (in math notation, ``x << y`` equals x * 2\ :sup:`y`\ , as long
+as none of the bits of x get shifted out). For example, to generate
+powers of 2, the following expressions can be employed::
+
+        1 <<  0  ==    1
+        1 <<  1  ==    2
+        1 <<  2  ==    4
+        1 <<  3  ==    8
+        ...
+        1 <<  8  ==  256
+        1 <<  9  ==  512
+        1 << 10  == 1024
+        ...
+
+.. _lang-bitshift-signbit-gotcha:
+
+When you shift x right by y bits (``x >> y``), and the highest bit in
+x is a 1, the behavior depends on the exact data type of x. If x is of
+type ``int``, the highest bit is special, and determines whether x is
+negative or not; the details are too complicated to explain here, but
+they are thoroughly explained in the Wikipedia article on `two's
+complement arithmetic
+<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two%27s_complement>`_\ , which the
+system most computers use to store integers. In that case, the sign
+bit is copied into lower bits, for esoteric historical reasons::
+
+    int x = -16;     // binary (all 32 bits): 11111111111111111111111111110000
+    int y = x >> 3;  // binary:               11111111111111111111111111111110
+
+
+
+This behavior, called "sign extension", is often not what you
+want. You probably wish zeros to be shifted in from the left.  It
+turns out that the right shift rules are different for ``unsigned
+int`` values, so you can use a type cast to suppress ones being copied
+from the left::
+
+    int x = -16;                  // binary: 11111111111111111111111111110000
+    int y = (unsigned int)x >> 3; // binary: 00011111111111111111111111111110
+
+
+
+If you are careful to avoid sign extension, you can use the
+right-shift operator, ``>>``, as a way to divide by powers of 2. For
+example::
+
+   int x = 1000;
+   int y = x >> 3;   // integer division of 1000 by 8, causing y = 125.
+
+
+Arduino Compatibility
+---------------------
+
+Since it's part of the C++ language, bit shifting on the Maple is
+compatible with the Arduino; however, you should keep in mind that the
+Maple has bigger integer types (as in, more bits) than the Arduino.
+
+Since the STM32 is a 32-bit processor, the ``int`` type takes up 32
+bits instead of 16, like on Arduino's 16-bit microcontroller.  This
+means that you can shift left, like ``x << y``, with bigger values of
+``y`` on the Maple before ones in ``x`` start to get shifted out.
+
+To calculate the number of bits of an integer type on the Maple,
+multiply its size in bytes (see :ref:`this table
+<lang-arithmetic-int-sizes>` for these) by 8, since there are 8
+bits in 1 byte.  For example, a ``short`` takes up 2 bytes of memory,
+or 2 * 8 = 16 bits.
+
+See Also
+--------
+
+-  :ref:`lang-bit`
+-  :ref:`lang-bitread`
+-  :ref:`lang-bitwrite`
+-  :ref:`lang-bitclear`
+
+
+.. include:: cc-attribution.txt