Bitwise Operators

3.4.2 – Bitwise Operators

Lua supports the following bitwise operators:

• &: bitwise AND
• |: bitwise OR
• ~: bitwise exclusive OR
• >>: right shift
• <<: left shift
• ~: unary bitwise NOT

All bitwise operations convert its operands to integers (see §3.4.3), operate on all bits of those integers, and result in an integer.

Both right and left shifts fill the vacant bits with zeros. Negative displacements shift to the other direction; displacements with absolute values equal to or higher than the number of bits in an integer result in zero (as all bits are shifted out).